Cardiac stem cell trial to heal heart
Doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute announced recently the completion of the first procedure in which a patient’s own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells that were then injected back into the patient’s heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle in a heart that had been injured by a heart attack.
The 24 patients participating in the study. Once enrolled in the study, patients go through a three-step procedure.
Using a catheter inserted through a vein in the patient’s neck, doctors remove a small piece of heart tissue, about half the size of a raisin.
Heart stem cells are cultured from the tissue using methods invented by the researchers, according to a Cedars-Sinai press release.
It takes about four weeks for the cells to multiply to numbers sufficient for therapeutic use, approximately 10 to 25 million.
In the third and final step, the now-multiplied cardiac stem cells are re-introduced into the patient’s coronary arteries during a second catheter procedure. — Our Bureau
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