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Injections To Replace Heart Surgery?

Posted by Soulskill on from the shot-through-the-heart dept.

chareverie writes "Researchers at Harvard University have been working towards a goal of replacing some types of heart surgery with injections of cells that would grow into blood vessels for damaged hearts. The cells that would be used are progenitor cells obtained from the blood or bone marrow, as opposed to stem cells that are obtained from human embryos. The research team was successful with their tests on growing heart blood vessels in mice. Joyce Bishoff, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard and senior author of the report, says, 'Our next goal down the line is to use them in humans.' She also notes that more studies need to be done on animals to see how these cells would react and behave with other types of tissues. A similar human experiment was done two years ago in Germany, during which a few people from a group of 75 heart attack victims were given injections of progenitor cells from their own bone marrow or blood. The report concluded that there were improved heart functions." Reader w1z4rd points out related coverage with some more information at BBC News.

5 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. What if you're afraid of shots? by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 4, Funny

    Couldn't we *please get this in a pill already?

    --
    My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
    1. Re:What if you're afraid of shots? by Laughing+Pigeon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am afraid not, the cells will just be digested in Your GI tract. When You are in position that You are in need of this kind of therapy, the injection will be the least of Your worries.

    2. Re:What if you're afraid of shots? by philspear · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't, but I wasn't going to let that stand in the way of the irony.

  2. Stem cells have been used before for heart surgery by blueish+yellow · · Score: 5, Informative
    The cells that would be used are progenitor cells obtained from the blood or bone marrow,...

    The word you're looking for to describe those cells is stem cells. But it wasn't the poster's fault. The poorly written article makes the same mistake.

    Don Ho had this surgery done where his own stem cells, extracted from his blood, were injected into his heart. He died soon after but his surgeon claims that the surgery was so successful that Don didn't recover fully before resuming touring and put too much strain on his heart and died.

  3. Re:Progenitor? by DebateG · · Score: 4, Informative

    The hierarchy of blood is a bit complicated. Everything starts with hematopoietic ("blood making") stem cells. Stem cells can divide to make more stem cells, or they can mature and become blood progenitors. Blood progenitors can't go backwards and form stem cells. However, progenitors can divide to form multiple blood lineages such as platelets and white blood cells depending on the biological signals they receive. Most articles talk about hematopoietic progenitors rather than stem cells to be technically precise. Stem cells are incredibly elusive; as far as I know, it is currently technically impossible get a completely pure population of them. You can, however, purify populations of bone marrow that contains nearly all the stem cells but also have a bunch of progenitors as well. These populations, confusingly, are often called progenitors themselves, even though they actually contain stem cells.