Beating heart stem cells analyzing could lead to heart attack
treatments
Submitted by harminka on Mon, 2007-07-30 10:13.
Posted under: Health heart attack treatment heart attacks stem cells
New research at the University of Nottingham, funded by the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), is
paving the way for techniques that use stem cells to repair the
damage caused by heart attacks.
The research, highlighted in the new issue of BBSRC Business, is
looking at the process that turns a stem cell into a cardiomyocyte –
the beating cell that makes up the heart. The Nottingham researchers
are developing a new system to monitor cardiomyocytes in real time as
they differentiate from stem cells into beating heart cells. The
system uses electrophysiology to record the electrical properties in
a cell and will be the first time it has been used to study
cardiomyocyte cells in the UK.
The researchers hope that their research could provide more detailed
information on the electrical activity of stem cell derived
cardiomyocytes. In the longer term, this could facilitate their use
in regenerating the damaged hearts of heart attack victims.
"Human embryonic stem cells promise unrivalled opportunities.
However, they are difficult, time-consuming and expensive to grow in
the lab", Dr Denning explains. "Our understanding of how to convert
them into cardiomyocytes is poor. At the moment we only know how to
produce a few million cardiomyocytes, but to treat just one heart
attack patient, we may need one billion that all function in the
correct way."
To help overcome the many challenges that stem cells bring, Dr
Denning and his team plan to engineer a novel system for real-time
analysis of cardiomyocytes during early development so their
properties are better understood.
The team have already demonstrated that sufficient numbers of stem
cell-derived cardiomyocytes can be produced for detailed analysis and
they plan to use new `electrophysiology' systems to record changes in
the cells when cultured. Electrophysiology is the study of cells'
electrical properties and this is the first time that the method has
been used in the UK to study stem cell-cardiomyocyte biology.
"This research will enable rapid development of stem cell-derived
cardiomyocytes as a tool for understanding the heart and its
diseases," says Dr Denning. However, he cautions: "Before we can
consider using stem cells to treat heart-attack patients there are
many problems which will take many years to solve. We don't yet know
how to deliver the cells to a patient's heart and prevent them being
washed away so that they actually stay in the heart and both survive
and function. It will take many years to overcome these challenges
and put stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes into medical usage."
The researchers will also be monitoring how the cells respond to
different pharmacological agents in order to improve drug-screening
processes and reduce the need for animal testing.
"A key part of the project is to monitor the effects of different
drugs on the cells. At present, only limited information is available
on how they respond to pharmacological or gene modulating agents.
"Between 1990 and 2001, 8 different drugs were withdrawn from the
market in the USA at an estimated cost of $8billion because they
caused unexpected deaths in several hundred patients. Our aim is to
reduce such occurrences by having better test methods to test the
drugs before they reach the clinic.
"By studying the drugs' effects on the heart cells in the lab, this
could reduce the need for animals in clinical trials."-Biotechnol
and Biological Sciences Research Council
http://www.huliq.
lead-to-heart-
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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