While other researchers have shown that stem cells derived from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood can regenerate cardiac tissue, this study demonstrates that adult stem cells circulating in blood can also repair a heart.
In the study, published online in the current issue of the journal Circulation, the scientists found that human blood stem cells -- "master" cells that produce other types of body cells as needed -- regenerated heart muscle cells as well as artery tissue in mice whose hearts were injured.
"This takes us a big step ahead," says the lead author, Edward T. H. Yeh, M.D., professor and chair of M. D. Anderson's Department of Cardiology. "Taking stem cells from blood is a lot easier, and a lot less painful, than taking it from bone marrow.
"For patients, it would be as simple as donating blood," he says. "We would then isolate these potent cells and give them back to the patient where the damage has occurred."
While the researchers are cardiologists and cancer specialists, and are interested in treating heart failure that occurs in up to 10 percent of patients who use chemotherapy, they say such cell-based regeneration therapy could benefit patients who have had a heart attack or other injuries that have led to heart failure. "Such a therapy cannot bring back dead heart muscle, but it can help restore weakened hearts, no matter what the cause of the damage was," says Yeh.
The research also contributes more evidence to the idea that stem cells circulating in the blood can transform themselves into different organ systems as needed to repair injury -- a notion dubbed "stem cell plasticity" that is both revolutionary and controversial. The theory, pioneered by M. D. Anderson researche
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Contact: Laura Sussman
lsussman@mdanderson.org
713-745-2457
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
20-Oct-2003