July 1st, 2009

Did you know that doctors just performed the first patient trial of a new stem cell treatment to repair heart attack damage?

Reports HealthDay via Forbes:

American physicians say they’ve performed the first procedure in which a patient received injections of his own heart stem cells to repair heart attack damage.

The 39-year-old man is the first of 16 people who will undergo the procedure as part of a phase 1 clinical trial being conducted at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles. Another eight people will act as controls.

All of the participants have damage and scarring from heart attacks that occurred within four weeks before their enrollment in the study. They will be monitored for six months after the procedure, and the results are to be released in late 2010.

…

“This procedure signals a new and exciting era in the understanding and treatment of heart disease,” study leader Dr. Eduardo Marban, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, said in a news release from the institute. “Five years ago we didn’t even know the heart had its own distinct type of stem cells. Now we are exploring how to harness such stem cells to help patients heal their own damaged hearts.”

“If successful, we hope the procedure could be widely available in a few years and could be more broadly applied to cardiac patients,” said Marban, who developed the technique.

Find out more at Forbes.