Taylor and colleagues used a process called decellularization to wash away existing cells from the hearts of dead rats while leaving the basic collagen structure intact. They injected this gelatin-like scaffold with heart cells from newborn rats, fed them a nutrient-rich solution and left them in the lab to grow. Four days later, the hearts started to contract.

What do you think about this research? Are you for or against?

via Comcast.net

Post from: Blisstree

A Dead Heart Brought Back To Life…

The two major hurdles that needed to be tackled are becoming a reality…

…via Science Daily- solve two problems in the development of a stem cell heart patch. The first is undesirable side effects, such as arrhythmia, that can result from immature and undeveloped cardiomyocytes being introduced to the heart. The second is the need for a scaffold that is biocompatible with the heart and able to hold the new cardiomyocytes in place while they integrate into the existing heart tissue. Matching the material to human heart muscle is also hoped to prevent deterioration of heart function before the cells take over.

Are you following me on this one? The current researchers are now understanding how stem cell-derived developing heart cells can be matured in the laboratory and how materials could be synthesized to form a patch to deliver them to damaged areas of the heart. Seriously exciting news. More has to be done and many more hours and months and years of hard work is yet to come, but just think for a second… Would you be willing to give this a try, even in its experimental stage?

Post from: Blisstree

Major Advancement For Stem Cells And Heart Repair

Depression linked to death following heart attack…Depression nearly triples the risk of death following a heart attack, even when accounting for other heart attack risk factors, according to research presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) annual meeting, which showed that among 360 depressed, post myocardial infarction patients followed for more than six years, those who did not recover from their depression in the first six months were more than twice as likely to die.

Implanting Embryonic cardiac cells prevents arrhythmias-The most dangerous consequence of heart attacks…When researchers at Cornell, the University of Bonn and the University of Pittsburgh transplanted living embryonic heart cells into cardiac tissue of mice that had suffered heart attacks, the mice became resistant to cardiac arrhythmias, thereby avoiding one of the most dangerous and fatal consequences of heart attacks.

Blood transfusions linked to surgery complications in women… Women die and get infections more often than men after heart surgery because they tend to receive more blood transfusions, which boost the risks of bad outcomes, according to a study published in the December Journal of Women’s Health.

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Some Interesting Hearty Links

Implanting human embryonic stem cells in rats four days after they had heart attacks repaired heart muscles and improved heart function, researchers from the University of Washington and the biotechnology company Geron report in an article appearing Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

Previous attempts to “heal” with stem cells in a cardiac fashion have failed secondary to the limited success of deriving heart cells from the stem cells, as well as their failure to thrive. Imagine what could happen to the stem cell market if these same results can be found in humans. Wow!

via Science Daily

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Heart Cells Rebuilt Using Human Embryonic Stem Cells

“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 

Post from: Blisstree

“Patch” Helps The Heart Grow New Cells