Blood stem cells may repair heart
14 Apr 2008, 0633 hrs IST,PTI
HOUSTON: Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical
Centre have for the first time used drug-treated blood stem cells to
repair heart damage in an animal model, results that may lead to
methods for healing injuries from cardiac diseases.
In the study, researchers screened about 147,000 molecules to find
one that could transform human blood stem cells into a form
resembling immature heart cells.
When they implanted blood stem cells activated by this compound into
injured rodent hearts, the human cells took root and improved the
animal's heart function.
"The clinical potential is enormous," said Dr Jay Schneider,
assistant professor of internal medicine and senior author of the
study, which appears online this week and in a future issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Despite medical advances in treating and preventing heart attacks,
once the heart is damaged it cannot repair itself, said Dr Schneider,
a cardiologist.
"Heart attack is a man-made problem," he said. "It's a function of
increased longevity and atherosclerosis, which have occurred at no
other time in human evolution."
In the first stage of the study, which involved mouse stem cells, the
researchers screened some 147,000 compounds in UT Southwestern'
Small Molecule Library to see which ones would activate genes known
to be at work in the early stages of heart development.
They initially sifted out about 1,600 compounds, but narrowed their
focus to a related group of molecules, among the most potent and easy
to make, called Shz for sulfonyl-hydrazone.
http://timesofindia
ir_heart/articlesho
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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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