Stem cell therapy can help treat heart failure in monkeys

a study has shown that transplanting human heart muscle cells into monkeys with heart failure can greatly repair their broken heart's ability to supply blood. The findings will advance clinical trials of human embryonic stem cell therapy in human patients. The results were recently published
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without intervention after a heart attack, blood flow will not reach the heart, leading to myocardial cell death, myocardial scarring and heart failure. In the event of heart failure, the heart cannot provide enough blood for the body. Researchers have found several new techniques to treat heart failure in mice, but have repeatedly suffered setbacks in human applications. The study in larger monkeys, taking into account that monkeys are closer to the body's physiological structure, may be more likely to predict the success rate of specific therapies in humans.
Charles Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, and his colleagues induced heart disease in monkeys, losing 40 percent of their pumping capacity, and then injected 750 million heart muscle cells extracted from human embryonic stem cells into the monkey's heart. Transplanted cells can produce a large number of new muscles on the damaged heart. After 4 weeks, the blood supply capacity of the monkeys receiving the cell transplant was restored by about 1/3. The researchers followed the two monkeys for 12 weeks and showed that they regained more than two-thirds of their blood supply. If these results can be repeated in future clinical trials, regenerative therapies for heart failure may be available. (Source: Feng Weiwei, China Science Journal)