Heart Valve Stem Cell Research

Discovery of cardiac stem cells.

Heart valve stem cell research.

But this is still an extremely young scientific. Several research teams around the country are exploring different ways of harnessing stem cells which have the ability to form many types of specialized cells to mend broken hearts. While many mechanical and biological replacement options exist today each has its drawbacks. Currently medical pharmaceutical and device based therapies only delay the progression of the disease and do not actually repair the heart.

In the past i have written several stories about stem cell use for heart valve. The stem cells formed new heart muscle and blood vessel cells. In addition the stem cell group did not report any adverse effects such as immune system reactions. That said i thought you might find this video very interesting.

In fact says brinker the new cells have a pre determined cardiac fate. He was buying diet soda when he saw a newspaper headline about the proposed research. Considering my fascination with medical technology i recently came across an interesting video about the use of stem cells to create heart valve replacements for the treatment of valvular disorders including aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation. In a study published last february in the lancet researchers treated 17 heart attack patients with an infusion of stem cells taken from their own hearts.

Autologous biological heart valves. As you can see the use of stem cells to treat heart patients shows great promise. People with valvular heart disease may require surgery to repair or replace the damaged heart valve. Center for regenerative medicine researchers plan to develop biological heart valves using a patient s own cells.

Jones 69 first learned about the heart stem cell trial in a convenience store. Helping the heart regenerate itself after damage is a dream of cardiovascular researchers. A new treatment using stem cells which have the potential to grow into a variety of heart cell types could potentially repair and regenerate damaged heart tissue. The stem cell patients also showed improved quality of life and day to day functioning.

That s based partly on recent animal studies in which scientists at both institutions isolated stem cells from the injured animals hearts and infused them back into the hearts of those same animals. Scientists thought the heart didn t have its own stem cells until professor antonio beltrami at the university of udine in italy described a small population of stem cells in the heart in 2003. Stem cells can now be used to correct heart and valve degeneration.