THI at St. Luke's reveals new insights on how adult stem cells repair damaged hearts following heart attack

May 7 2010

Physician scientists at the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital (THI at St. Luke's) are publishing research this week that reveals new insights into how a particular set of human adult stem cells helps repair damaged hearts following a heart attack in laboratory mice.

“This is one more critical piece of knowledge we can put to use in a way that will improve our patients' lives”

Researchers expect to use the findings to improve the design of new clinical trials to determine better ways to provide cell therapy for human patients with heart diseases.

Researchers at THI at St. Luke's already have found that adult stem cells derived from a patient's own bone marrow can be transplanted into a damaged heart, where they can lead to the development of new heart muscle and blood vessels. However, the precise process by which the cells affect these repairs remains elusive.

A team, led by Dr. Edward T. H. Yeh, the Janice and Robert McNair Foundation Scholar at THI, has now found that a certain set of human cells, known as CD34+, when injected into the hearts of mice damaged by heart attacks helps improve heart functions by stimulating the formation of new blood vessels and/or by providing beneficial chemicals within the heart, not by forming new heart muscles. The study also found that these beneficial cells can survive in the hearts of the mice for up to a year.

"This is one more critical piece of knowledge we can put to use in a way that will improve our patients' lives," said Dr. Yeh, who is also chair of the Cardiology Department at The University of Texas-M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

"We are excited by this new practical knowledge that we believe can be translated into new a better methods of treatment and provide new hope," added Dr. James T. Willerson, President and Medical Director of THI at St. Luke's, who also participated in the study and is a pioneer in the groundbreaking use of adult stem cell therapy in heart patients.

The findings of Dr. Yeh's team are being published online this month in Circulation Research, the Journal of the American Heart Association.