Human Heart Cells Grown from Stem Cells
Posted on: Friday, 25 April 2008, 00:15 CDT
Scientists from Canada, the US, and the UK announced on Wednesday they have successfully grown human heart progenitor cells from embryonic stem cells.The findings were produced by a team of researchers led by Dr Gordon Keller, director of the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University Health Network in Toronto.
The results showed that researchers could make different kinds of human heart cells for use in basic and clinical research.
Scientists also hope the findings will help them create new ways of healing damaged heart tissue.
“This development means that we can efficiently and accurately make different types of human heart cells for use in both basic and clinical research, said Dr . Keller.
“The immediate impact of this is significant as we now have an unlimited supply of these cells to study how they develop, how they function and how they respond to different drugs. In the future, these cells may also be very effective in developing new strategies for repairing damaged hearts, following a heart attack.”
Heart progenitor cells are immature heart cells that are able to make three major cell types found in the human heart - cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells and vascular smooth muscle cells. These three types of cells are crucial to healthy functioning of the heart.
By transplanting the three types of heart cells into mice with simulated heart disease, researchers noticed and improvement in their heart function.
"We're not the first group to show that you can make heart cells from embryonic stem cells. That's been done before," said Keller.
"So what's different here? We've taken more of a step-wise approach to following the progression of how these embryonic stem cells move through development to make the first type of heart cells."
The study will be published in the upcoming volume of the journal Nature.
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Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports
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