Posted on 05/30/2006 8:11:37 AM PDT by Neville72
A team of US researchers has discovered the home of stem cells in the heart, lending credence to the idea that the heart has the capacity to repair itself. The finding raises the possibility that these cardiac stem cells could one day be manipulated to rebuild tissues damaged by heart disease still the leading cause of death in the US and UK.
Because fully developed heart cells do not divide, experts have believed the organ was unable to regenerate after injury. But, in 2003, researchers at Piero Anversas laboratory at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, US, discovered stem cells in the hearts of mice, and subsequently humans. However, they still did not know whether these stem cells actually resided in the heart or had merely migrated there from another tissue, such as bone marrow.
So Anversas colleague Annarosa Leri began to look for tell-tale niches of stem cells in the heart, such as a cluster of undifferentiated cells paired with the requisite nurse cells vital for stem cell growth and development.
Using adult mice as a model, she located cardiac stem cell niches, which were especially abundant in the heart's atria. She found the stem cells clustered together with more mature heart cells in niches between cardiac muscle cells.
Ultimate goal
Leri and her colleagues have now removed tiny numbers of cardiac stem cells from people undergoing heart operations, grown them in the lab and then transplanted them into the damaged hearts of rats and mice.
The results are promising, says Leri, and may eventually give better heart-healing results than bone-marrow derived stem cells. We think that these are the cells that normally provide new heart tissue and will most likely be better suited for repair of diseased hearts, she says.
But the ultimate goal is to understand how cardiac stem cells really work, says Stephen Minger, director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory at Kings College London, UK, who was not involved in the research.
If these cells truly do exist we would like to be able to find out what regulates their activity and whether you can simulate that mechanism to repair heart tissue without having to use cells from elsewhere, he says.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0600635103)
good stuff! I'm all for stem-cell research, as long as it's not at the expense of human life.
My cousin has MS and gave birth to a baby girl a couple of years ago. My aunt and uncle paid to have the umbilical cord cryogenically frozen to preserve the stem cells, in case the child grows up to have MS and if stem cell research could help fight it in the future, in any way. They said it was only about $95/year to store...not bad I'd say.
Why not? Pretty smart, I'd say.
Leri has nine complete, linked articles there on the heart and regeneration. If you find the biology interesting, check the titles and abstracts. My guess is that all of PNAS's articles are free except the newest which require a subscription.
The article of this thread had not been posted by PNAS at the time I looked. I've noticed that sometimes they are discussed in the popular press before they are listed here. Please note that those in blue at the last link are freebies.
Induced Abortion: The Number One Cause of Death In The United States.
According to the US Center for Disease Control the leading causes of death in the US in 2002 were:
Abortion 1,290,000
Heart disease 710,760
Cancer 553,091
Stroke 167,661
Chronic lower respiratory tract disease 122,009
Accidents 97,900.
AIDS was not even in the top 10 causes with 17,544 reported deaths.
If induced abortions were reduced by 50% the savings of lives would be greater than finding a cure for all cancer.
Approximately 1 of every 4 pregnancies in the US is ended by surgical abortion.
Pro-Life PING
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Glad to hear about this research.
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