Stem Cells for the treatment of Ischemic Heart Disease

Finally it looks like the hospitals in the US will soon have results that will get the FDA to approve stem cell therapy as a potential first liner for ischemic heart disease. This report states that approximately 15-20 sites in the US through their respective divisions of cardiology and pathology are investigating 200 randomly selected patients from across the country, harvesting their CD34+ cells and injecting the cells into the heart to investigate the extent of which new blood vessels are formed.

The patients are selected from an existing pool where usual and conventional treatments have already been applied but failed or where no surgical procedures are thought to be helpful. Myocardial ischemia is one of the most severe forms of coronary artery disease, which is the leading killer in the U.S., according to University Hospital officials.

"This is a study to try and reduce chest pain in people that have this coronary disease and have no other options," said Mark Anderson, director of the Division of Cardiology and associate director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, who is involved in the research.

"By increasing the number of those cells present, it encourages the heart to create biological bypasses to connect with another source of blood," he said. "The area of the heart causing pain is not dead. It is alive, but starved."

The disease causes arteries to tighten so that not enough blood passes to areas of the heart, which leads to chest pain and potentially to heart attacks. The stem cells, researchers hope, will spark new paths for blood to get through.

The treatment method is called Autologous Cellular Therapy CD 34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia Trial or ACT34-CMI, and is funded by Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Appropriately so as Baxter has its own line of products for stem cell harvesting and processing. Increasing the applications for this line of service beyond cancer would add a new revenue stream for the company.

The American Heart Association estimates that 125,000 to 250,000 people with coronary artery disease develop myocardial ischemia each year. In Malaysia, the estimates would range about 12,000 to 25,000 annually. I hope that they would come to us early so that we can help them salvage as many of those starving cells as we can.


On another note, I found this site which tells us what to do if someone is having a heart attack. Could come in handy.