Heart disease, the thing that kills more Americans than any other cause, is a process…What makes heart disease a seemingly intractable problem is this fact that heart tissue doesn’t regenerate.
This may not be the end of it, however…[R]esearchers at Shinshu University have found that they can induce cardiac self-repair in primates via transplanted stem cells from other primates. The result is that most elusive thing: improved cardiac function. Human hearts may be unbroken after all
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Naturally, the recipient’s immune system identifies the transplanted cells as foreign and goes on the attack…To get around this, the Shinshu researchers ensured that a key protein found on the cell surface of the donor stem cells…matched that of the recipient.
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In any case, cardiac regeneration via stem cell still has a ways to go. One thing the researchers behind the current study discovered is that hearts featuring grafted cells were more likely beat irregularly. It wasn’t to the point of being dangerous, but it’s still a cause for concern and also a bit of intrigue.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: Stem Cell Therapy Mends Broken Hearts
