We’ve known for a long time that our obsession with pork products was killing us, laying Chicago Bears fan clubs to waste faster than their perpetual unimpressive seasons. Though it’s pork that’s been killing us, it may be pork that saves our cardiac-arrested lives.
Scientists may be on the verge of the “first ever cure for heart attack,” as they begin clinical trials to test the use of bone marrow stem cells for treating heart attack damage. The excitement began following the success of a similar therapy used for pigs.
Forty-eight volunteers with heart attack damage will be enrolling in the Phase I trial at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md. Two have already checked in for the potentially life-saving study, the results of which are expected mid-2006.
The decision to begin testing on humans was accelerated after the success of a study involving pigs. Adult stem cells, taken from the bone marrow of one pig, were injected into the damaged heart of another.
Within two months, the mesenchymal cells restored heart function and repaired heart damage by up to 75 percent, according to the study published in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That they were adult stem cells, and not stem cells harvested from early-stage embryos, has shielded the trials from controversy and protest. Unlike embryonic stem cells, the mesenchymal cells don’t have the properties that allow them to become any kind of tissue, which limits the range of use.
As shown in earlier studies, bone marrow stem cells produce blood cells and also heart muscle cells. If harvested at an early stage of development, the risk of immune system rejection is minimal.
“There is reason for optimism about these findings, possibly leading to a first-ever cure for heart attack in humans,” senior author Dr. Joshua Hare, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said.
“Ultimately, the goal is to develop a widely applicable treatment to repair and reverse the damage done to heart muscle that has been infarcted, or destroyed, after losing its blood supply.”
