Adult stem cells little or no help to heart repair

MSNBC ^ | The Associated Press

[reaganson77]

Giving heart attack survivors stem cells from their own bone marrow did little to repair their damaged hearts, according to the three best studies to date of this controversial therapy.

The modest results suggest more study is needed — and, some scientists say, demonstrate the need to lift political limits on using cells from embryos, which offer more promise for turning into heart-repairing tissue.

“The optimal cell type has not been discovered yet,” said Dr. Kenneth Chien, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiovascular Research Center, who had no role in the studies.

[reaganson77]

These scientists are following a socialist agenda.

[Lx]

Isn't this what helped Don Ho? They used his own tissue and grew it in Israel and implanted it in him in Thailand I think since the procedure isn't allowed in the USA.

[SuziQ]

The modest results suggest more study is needed — and, some scientists say, demonstrate the need to lift political limits on using cells from embryos, which offer more promise for turning into heart-repairing tissue.

Modest results are better than NO results, which is exactly what embryonic stem cell use has had.

You don't reckon these guys have any agenda at all, do you? /sarc

[BIGZ]

I am sure that embryonic stem cells would enable us to regenerate hearts.

[HEY4QDEMS]

Actually, several recent reports have indicated that stem cell therapies, fetal or adult, are yielding very little, if any benefits.

It's not the magic pill that it was hyped up to be, albeit the technology is in it's relative infancy.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Where's your evidence of that? Sounds like a medical agenda to me.

But this study doesn't sound to me as if it actually proved anything about the type of stem cells used, since the delivery method seems quite likely to be the explanation for lack of success.

A tiny balloon momentarily blocked regular blood flow into the heart and stem cells were injected in an attempt to give them a couple of minutes to try to take root.

It's hardly surprising that having the cells briefly sloshing around in the blood inside the heart wouldn't cause them to "take root", since that obviously bears no resemblance at all to the way functional cardiac muscle cells came to be present in the heart. I wonder if somebody has tried injecting the stem cells into the heart muscle itself, where the cells would sit in place and be surrounded by the factors that normally surround functioning cardiac muscle cells.

[GovernmentShrinker]

More likely to regenerate WHOLE hearts for transplants, though, rather than regenerate tissue in an existing heart.

[MrBlueSky2005]

This makes me sick. Look at the actual results of the study at this article:

HEADLINE: Immature cells strengthen damaged heart
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060920/hl_nm/heart_dc_1

Quite a difference when you don't go out of your way to inject bias into the story...people should be made clearly aware of the bias\inaccuracies in the AP story.

[Coleus]

“The optimal cell type has not been discovered yet,” said Dr. Kenneth Chien, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiovascular Research Center, who had no role in the studies.  Chien said experiments in various laboratories over the past 15 years suggest embryonic stem cells show they can turn into beating cardiac muscle, though it has not been tried in human patients. “This is an area worthy of further pursuit,” he said.   >>

Dr. Kenneth Chien is satan personified.   For 25 years in animal studies and almost 10 yrs. in human studies; there has never been a successful use of ESCR in humans.

 

Heart May Be Home To Its Own Stem Cells

Adult Stem Cell Research At UB Targets Damaged Hearts

Umbilical Cord Blood Limits Heart Attack Damage

Adult Stem Cells Improve Cardiac Function And Blood Flow In Patients With Heart Disease  (Bone Marrow)

Bone Marrow Stem Cells May Heal Hearts Even Years After Heart Attacks

Menstrual Blood Yields Stem Cells (Makes Heart Cells)

Co. Puts Stem Cells In Failing Hearts

Stem Cells From Fat 
Singer Don Ho Says Procedure Saved Him 

Heart Attack Patients Use Own Stem Cells To Heal, Research Finds 

Israeli Stem Cell Research Shows Umbilical Cord Blood Can Rejuvenate Damaged Heart Tissue

Heart Attack Patients Use Own Stem Cells To Heal, Research Finds

Stem Cells With Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting, Heart Failure Patient Shows Astonishing Improvement

Stem Cell Study For Patients With Heart Attack Damage Seeks To Regenerate Heart Muscle

Stem Cells Might Fight Circulatory Disorder Peripheral Arterial Disease

Cells derived from heart stem cells can repair heart attack damage

Study launched to study effect of using ADULT stem cells to prevent congestive heart failure

Cloning the heart (using ADULT Stem Cells)

Administering Stem Cells To Patients With Myocardial Infarction Leads To Reduction Of The Infarct

[reaganson77]

embryonic research is about 10 years old.
adult is decades old. The limited amount of funding from private sources will be unable to keep pace with the needs of the stem cell research community.

[Coleus]

thanks for the ping...

[GovernmentShrinker]

I think the issue of delivery is going to be as big a challenge as getting the cells (embryonic or adult) to differentiate as needed. Per my previous post, this delivery method sounds sort of bizarre to me. Perhaps there's evidence of that sort of approach having some effectiveness in animal studies, though I haven't heard about it. If any kind of stem cells were prone to sticking to the interior of the heart and "taking root" there, it seems to me that everybody's heart would be getting clogged up pretty fast, since there are various types of stem cells circulating in the blood normally (some of which were used in one of these studies).

[SuziQ]

The limited amount of funding from private sources will be unable to keep pace with the needs of the stem cell research community.

If the FDA would get out of the way and let some of this research in adult stem cells be done on WILLING patients in the US, I believe you will see money coming from everywhere going into this research.

[Eepsy]

Since when is adult stem cell therapy "controversial"?

[GovernmentShrinker]

The limited amount of funding from private sources will be unable to keep pace with the needs of the stem cell research community.

Of course, researchers in just about ANY scientific field will readily claim that they need government funding, because private funding "won't be enough". Personally I'd like to see both embryonic and adult stem cell research plow ahead with no government funding, and as much private funding as the researchers can get their hands on. Private money tends to get spent much more judiciously than tax money.

I have yet to hear any claim of potential for either adult or embryonic stem cell research and treatment derived therefrom, that pertains to any legitimate PUBLIC health issue. Show me how it's going to effectively highly contagious diseases, bioterrorism attacks, etc., and I'll see the need for public funding. But we should also pull public funding for every other type of medical research that isn't clearly related to PUBLIC health threats.

[BIGZ]

SARCSM, SARCASM, SARCASM

[HEY4QDEMS]

I don't know enough about the methodology to agree or disagree with your theory.

That said, I also believe that doctors and researchers do not have enough hard data to be making declarative statements about which type of stem cells, embryonic or adult, are best.

[HEY4QDEMS]

LOL. Would you like to borrow my tag line?

[BIGZ]

OK