Cardiology and Medical Interventions

Stem Cell Research on Cardiology

Regenerative medicine and stem cell research have tremendous potential to revolutionize the treatment of cardiac disease. The heart has a limited ability to regenerate damaged tissue after a heart attack. Current drug therapies slow the progression of heart failure but are not curative and heart transplants can only be offered to a very limited number of patients. Cardiac stem cells have the potential to differentiate into all the cells that make up the heart, including heart muscle cells, smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells. Both embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, mature cells that are manipulated back to a stem cell state that can be harnessed to create new heart cells. The difficulty is that the heart cells made with stem cells resemble the heart cells of an infant, rather than adult heart cells. To function in adult hearts, the new heart cells must “mature” and then be able to survive within the constantly beating environment of the heart. The scientific community has generated the technology to make heart cells that are immature, but very few heart cells derived from stem cells integrate into the normal heart tissue as mature heart cells. At the HSCI, our researchers are focused on understanding how to take these new heart cells all the way to maturity and stability, so they can be used as an effective therapy.