University of Louisville doctors at Jewish Hospital are conducting the world’s first phase one, FDA-approved clinical trial using adult cardiac stem cells to treat heart disease.
Patients with advanced heart disease who already are undergoing bypass surgery will be recruited for participation in the clinical trial, which uses adult stem cells taken from the patient’s own cardiac tissue. During surgery, a small piece of tissue that is routinely removed during the bypass procedure will be frozen and sent to colleagues at Harvard University so that the adult cardiac stem cells can be extracted.
After the patient has recovered for three to four months, the cells will be directly injected into cardiac scar tissue using a minimally-invasive cardiac catheterization procedure, which reaches the heart through a large artery in the patient’s leg.
The patients will be evaluated over the course of at least a year for heart function and blood flow. The heart’s overall size and the size of the scar tissue will be measured.
“Our hope is that the cardiac stem cells will help the heart tissue regenerate, reducing the size of the patient’s scar tissue and improving heart function,” said study leader Roberto Bolli, Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Institute Distinguished Chair in Cardiology. Bolli is collaborating with a number of cardiovascular and stem cell specialists for the clinical trial, including Mark Slaughter, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UofL, and Piero Anversa, of Harvard University and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.
University of Louisville doctors at Jewish Hospital are conducting the world’s first phase one, FDA-approved clinical trial using adult cardiac stem cells to treat heart disease.
Patients with advanced heart disease who already are undergoing bypass surgery will be recruited for participation in the clinical trial, which uses adult stem cells taken from the patient’s own cardiac tissue. During surgery, a small piece of tissue that is routinely removed during the bypass procedure will be frozen and sent to colleagues at Harvard University so that the adult cardiac stem cells can be extracted.
After the patient has recovered for three to four months, the cells will be directly injected into cardiac scar tissue using a minimally-invasive cardiac catheterization procedure, which reaches the heart through a large artery in the patient’s leg.
The patients will be evaluated over the course of at least a year for heart function and blood flow. The heart’s overall size and the size of the scar tissue will be measured.
“Our hope is that the cardiac stem cells will help the heart tissue regenerate, reducing the size of the patient’s scar tissue and improving heart function,” said study leader Roberto Bolli, Jewish Hospital Heart and Lung Institute Distinguished Chair in Cardiology. Bolli is collaborating with a number of cardiovascular and stem cell specialists for the clinical trial, including Mark Slaughter, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UofL, and Piero Anversa, of Harvard University and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.
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