Originally published September 22 2005
Stem cells regenerate cardiac muscles
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A Kyoto University research team found that stem cells that were taken apart using an enzyme and then grown in a culture can develop into heart muscles, blood vessels and neurons under the correct conditions.
Stem cells that can regenerate cardiac muscle cell have been discovered in human heart tissue for the first time, according to a Kyoto University research team.
The findings are a world first that could discredit prevailing opinion among scientists that diseased human cardiac muscle cannot be repaired.
The feat is likely to open the way for regenerative medicine aimed at treating diseases that currently require heart transplants.
According to the team, it obtained heart tissue by consent during operations on about 50 people suffering from heart diseases.
The researchers then took the cells apart using an enzyme and grew them in culture.
After culturing the clusters for seven to 10 days, the team found that the cells were stem cells that had developed into different types of cells such as heart muscle, blood vessels and neuron.
The researchers also discovered that injections of the stem cells into the heart of a mouse that had suffered an embolism had rebuilt its damaged heart muscle and blood vessel cells, eventually helping improve heart functions.
The team said after conducting experiments on dogs and pigs, it would start carrying out clinical tests as early as next spring in which terminal heart-disease patients would be injected with heart muscle cells.
In 2003, one of the team leaders, the assistant professor at the centre, reported the world's first discovery of stem cells in the heart muscles of a mouse.
Stem cell research aimed at regenerative medicine has been conducted by medical institutions both at home and abroad.
But it had been believed that bone marrow, from which stem cells were normally harvested, could not proliferate heart muscle cells.
ES cells have the potential to cause damage to the body.
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