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For people suffering from heart failure, simply walking to the mailbox can seem like an impossible challenge. But now, an experimental heart surgery may provide dramatic relief. The innovative source of this treatment is a patient's own stem cells. A small scar can be life changing. It means for the first time in six years Richard Howell is enjoying retirement. For six years, heart failure left Richard too weak to leave his living room. And it put him at risk for other serious health problems, including organ failure. Richard Howell: "I'd get up and walk across the kitchen; I would...

SUNRISE, Fla., Nov. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -. Bioheart, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative cell therapies designed to repair areas of damaged muscle tissue in a patient's heart and improve cardiac function, is expanding its United States and European clinical trials of its MyoCell(TM) adult myogenic (muscle) stem cell composition and MyoCath(R) needle-injection catheter product candidates. MyoCell(TM) is a non-acute, clinical therapy for treatment of damage to the heart in patients in Class II or Class III heart failure. Bioheart believes that its MyoCell(TM) therapy has the potential to become a leading non-acute treatment for severe damage...

Scientists have shown that cells in the heart's outer layer can migrate deeper into a failing organ to carry out essential repairs.   The migration of progenitor cells is controlled by a protein called thymosin beta 4, already known to help reduce muscle cell loss after a heart attack.   The discovery opens up the possibility of using the protein to develop more effective treatments for heart disease.   The University College London (UCL) study appears in the journal Nature. Finding out how this protein helps to heal the heart offers enormous potential in fighting heart disease Professor Colin Blakemore Medical Research Council...

An immediate early publication of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press, on Nov. 22, 2006 points to the possible existence of master cardiac stem cells with the capacity to produce all three major tissues of the mammalian heart. A companion Cell paper also published online reports the discovery of a second population of cardiac progenitors, which are capable of forming both cardiac muscle and the smooth muscle found in the heart's blood vessel walls.  Together with similar findings reported in the November issue of the journal Developmental Cell, also a Cell Press publication, the findings challenge the notion that...