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Stem Cells in the Heart?
NewScientist reports that researchers have discovered stem cells in the heart, leading them to believe that the heart can regenerate itself. From the article: "The finding raises the possibility that these cardiac stem cells could one day be manipulated to rebuild tissues damaged by heart disease - still the leading cause of death in the US and UK. Because fully developed heart cells do not divide, experts have believed the organ was unable to regenerate after injury. But, in 2003, researchers at Piero Anversa's laboratory at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, US, discovered stem cells in the hearts of mice, and subsequently humans. However, they still did not know whether these stem cells actually resided in the heart or had merely migrated there from another tissue, such as bone marrow."
Hey, I'm not a stem cell researcher, and I did read the article...
But there was really not much actual science in this article.
Are we talking about adult, embryonic or.. I assume not, but cord blood stem cells.
I assume we are talking about adult stem cells. These have been discovered and are old news. In fact adult stem cells exist in basically any tissue, which includes the heart... So what exactly was the big news story here about?
Does this mean I won't be getting that gorilla heart?
Let me be the first to say I oppose removal of people's hearts to extract stem cells from them.
This was news a few years ago when some folks got an electric pump installed to assist their failing heart, and their OEM heart recovered to the point where the pump was no longer needed.
Fantastic they discovered stems cells, but the heart repairing itself when relieved of load is not news.
(btw, I don't remember the name of the device used when they discovered this, but it was basically a small, simple liquid pump installed next to the heart. They didn't try to mimic a pulse, figuring it was unneccesary. They were right.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
These pumps are called LVADs, or Left Ventricular Assist Devices, and they have been widely used for years (and continue to be). Here's one site with some pretty general, readable information on them. There are a few varieties (some provide pulsatile flow, like the HeartMate XVE) and some provide axial, non-pulsatile flow (HeartMate II). I don't work for Thoratec, but those are by far the most commonly used ones at my institution. Here is a link to some videos from Thoratec if you're interested. Hope you find this useful.
Now instead of heart attacks from clogged arteries, people can get heart attacks from a kidney forming inside of their heart!
At least people don't need to worry anymore that they'll wake up in a bathtub full of ice with a fresh scar on their side. Why steal a kidney when you can take a heart instead and get a 2-for-1 deal?
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He was born without an aorta, and has had 20+ surgeries, each time replacing the tubes connecting his heart to the rest of his body with longer ones. If a compatible aorta could be grown just with stem cells, he would have no further need for surgery.
Right now, he is set for a few more years before they have to cut him open again and make adjustments. I hope by then they can just replace the tubes with living tissue and also replace the unsightly scar tissue that has developed from being cut open so many times.
Let's pray to $DEITY that this gets off the ground. I'm pretty sure it will, mindless theologans aside.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
Oh so that crazy witch-doctor guy in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" wasn't just performing some satanic ritual...he was harvesting stemcells for the benefeit of medical science...how nice of him.
However, they still did not know whether these stem cells actually resided in the heart or had merely migrated there from another tissue, such as bone marrow.
Well, bone marrow is reponsible for the production of blood cells, so having stem cells migrate into the blood stream and end up in the organ every ounce of one's blood eventually passes through makes sense to me.
I just shared the news with my roommates, who are going through an awfully difficult break-up.
They've been so upset for so long, and today when I told them about how their hearts can regenerate, I think I saw hope in their eyes for the first time...
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preventing heart atacks.
Curing heart diseases is undoutedly important and necessary, but understanding why and how we have heart diseases could lead to less such diseases in the first place.
The problem - and not only with heart related diseases - is that there are quite a lot of life-style related causes, isn't it so?
And changing behaviours (what you eat, how you exercise, how you relate to your fellow human beings etc) is presently more "difficult" (for cultural reasons) than discovering cell manipulation techniques, that is, than intervening (than making a "patch").
That is the tradition bestowed upon us at least since Francis Bacon: the world, including nature and the human body, are objects which we can manage, alter, change to suit our "needs", to extract profit etc, because we can.
Instead of adopting a humbler attitude towards life, the universe and everything, trying to live seamlessly with our environment and with each others, we learned to alter the world so that it would adapat to our whims. The eventual errors, mistakes and disasters that follow such courses of action are tackled with further and deeper interventions.
Is it possible to change centuries of an intervention tradition, to try to understand and adapt to the environment and others, instead of adapting others and the environment to us?
Am I making any sense?
"their OEM heart"
Wow. I've never actually heard organs referred to as OEM.
Imagine an organ transplant...
"Well, sir, we can pop in this OEM model here, but it's pretty pricey. We do, however, have this third-party Korean heart that we could slap on in there, but it would violate your warranty and, lemme tell ya', those boys in inspections on the other side are unforgiving of that sort of thing. Of course, we could just throw a refurb in there, but those can be hard to come by..."
All in good humor of course, thanks for your informative post
Yum! You said Bacon...
*Drools*
Mindless slashdot posters aside too. This involves cardiac stem cells, not embryonic. That means no embryos are destroyed to harvest them, which means no theologans (or even any theologians) are going to be complaining about it. The debate is about embryonic stem cells, not stem cells. Note the emphasis on embryonic. In the future, please keep your flamebait on topic.
Also, this development would not help your friend. These are cardiac stem cells, so they can only develop into cardiac tissue. The aorta is a blood vessel, and is composed of material very different to the heart. It wouldn't help with the visible scar tissue for the same reason.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I've always believed that eating the heart of a fallen enemy would give me his courage. Getting his stem cells to boot is a totally unexpected bonus.
So now it will be relatively easy to imitate Dr Who's regeneration ability. Remember the Doctor has two hearts, too, so we could grow an extra heart also. Hmmm...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lJUdZqoOdU
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You do have an extremely valid point. Many will probably poo-poo your thoughts, however (which is sad).
We live in a society in which we really don't respect what fragile gifts our bodies are. The mantra seems to be "you could be hit by a bus tomorrow so live it up!!". While it is true that at any time your body can cease to function for a myriad of reasons, chances are you are going to live to see 60. What then? Living an entire life smoking, eating like a slob, and sitting on the couch will have taken a toll. You are going to put all your eggs in the medical science basket? Assume they can cut you open and make you all better? I've seen those who live their whole life abusing their bodies. It isn't pretty. You may be still biologically functioning, but that sure isn't living.
The attitude in society should regard medical advances as a gift. A suppliment to a life of good eating and good living. As a way to give your body another 10 years which it might otherwise not have had. Sadly, it is viewed as an expectation.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
As far as I understand it, embryonic stem cells are totally undifferentiated cells. Adult stem cells are generally somewhat differentiated. Thus you get the stem cells in this article, which are cardiac stem cells. They don't have the potential of embryonic stem cells to grow into anything, but they can still be used to help regrow damaged cardiac cells.
Of course, when it comes to actual therapy, techniques will have to be developed that rely on adult stem cells. The whole point of stem cell therapy is that you use your own stem cells to regrow tissue that won't be rejected by your body. If you use embryonic stem cells to regrow stuff, because the stuff regrown is still a foreign body, you'd still be stuck with all the anti-rejection medication current transplant recipients need.
The primary use of embryonic stem cells is not therepeutic, it's research oriented. Because embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated, it's easier to use them to do research. The idea is that the techniques developed using easy to obtain embryonic stem cells can then be translated into using adult stem cells, which is where the therapies are going to come from.
I'm not a microbiologist, but that's what I've picked up from the debate.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
That would be true if it were initial growth, or if you wanted to summon the body to grow an aorta on its own. But an aorta could be made from generic stem-cell-cultured tissue, and it would be accepted by the body's other cells.
Do not downmod posts "overrated" simply because you disagree with them.
A chick flick aimed at cardiologists.
Also refer to the NIH Hematopoietic Stem Cells. There's tons of research going on, so tell your friend to hang on...
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
But we've been doing adult stem cell therapy to treat previously untreatable heart desease in Thailand for a couple of years already. It isn't approved yet in the U.S. so people come here to do it, including some famous people (sort of), like Don Ho (story http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/23/D8ELPR3G8 .html)
Oh, no! This means that the Bush Administration will soon outlaw owning a heart! At least, one funded by taxpayers.
Nuffsaid
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Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
I know much less about this, so am sort of speculating, but I know that the scar consists of fibrous tissue, which is created from fibroblasts. There might be some of these present in the heart, but they more likely arrive via blood vessels, leave the vessels (extravasate), and migrate to the damaged area.
You assume theologans know and understand the difference. Some do, but a hell of a lot don't. They just hear the word stem cells, remember that their preacher said they were bad, and immediately go off. Its really an amazing brain washing system they have.
If they are "real" theologians, then its the preacher who would be listening to them, not the other way around. And yes, a "real" theologian would understand the difference.