“Patch” Helps The Heart Grow New Cells
July 16, 2007 by Kendra James, RN
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
A new “patch” that is placed on damaged portions of a heart can help regenerate cardiac cells after a heart attack and regenerate heart function. This is pretty amazing stuff. Now if we can make the transition from rats to humans we could see a decrease in the need for heart transplants.
“Normally, adult human hearts do not regenerate because the heart doesn’t make more cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) after injury,” explained lead researcher Dr. Bernhard Kuhn, from the Department of Cardiology at Children’s Hospital Boston. “It would be desirable to induce the heart to make new cardiomyocytes after injury.”
Major advantage to this type of therapy…
The advantage of this technique is that it doesn’t require new cells, such as stem cells, to coax the growth of new heart cells. Stem cells might also migrate to other parts of the body, with unknown consequences, Kuhn said. The patch is “also not gene-based, so it’s not gene therapy,” he said.
I will keep you posted!
via Forbes.com
