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The heart does have a limited ability to heal itself — and a genetic 'trick' can harness this. Can heart cells renew themselves, and can scientists help them do so? Two papers published online in Nature today suggest that heart muscle cells can make copies of themselves at a very low rate1, but that a genetic trick can prompt them to do a better job2. Those results give hope that hearts damaged by cardiovascular disease — which causes the deaths of almost 17 million people a year — could be coaxed to regenerate themselves. Heart muscle cannot renew itself very...

TONY EASTLEY: If you're over 65, chances are you or your spouse has coronary artery disease. One in two older Australians have the condition and heart disease is still the number one cause of premature death and disability in this country. Scientists have already managed to create heart tissue that beats, and they believe stem cells could be the missing piece of a puzzle that will finally allow them to make a new heart muscle from a person's own tissue. Jane Cowan reports. JANE COWAN: One of the things that makes heart disease so difficult to treat is that heart...

U-M team reports success of rapid 3-D cell-growth technique that produces pulsing, organized tissue A length of bioengineered heart muscle, or BEHM, grown at the University of Michigan using rat cardiac muscle cells and a fibrin gel base. Click here for more information. ANN ARBOR, Mich. — It looks, contracts and responds almost like natural heart muscle – even though it was grown in the lab. And it brings scientists another step closer to the goal of creating replacement parts for damaged human hearts, or eventually growing an entirely new heart from just a spoonful of loose heart cells.  This...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Japanese researchers have harvested stem cells from human menstrual blood, a medical conference has heard. The researchers say these stem cells could be coaxed into forming specialised heart cells, which might one-day be used to treat failing or damaged hearts. At the meeting of the American College of Cardiology, Dr Shunichiro Miyoshi reported that he and his colleagues at Keio University in Tokyo collected menstrual blood from six women and harvested stem cells that originated in the lining of the uterus. They were able to obtain about 30 times more stem cells from menstrual blood than from bone marrow, Miyoshi...