When we develop the ability to convert several cells into a stem cell, he maintained the promise of a completely new type of therapy. Instead of making the body try to fix their cells or deal with the complications of organ transplants, we could convert some adult cells into stem cells and induce them to form any tissue in the body. We could repair or replace the tissues with an effectively infinite supply of a patient’s own cells.
However, the Nobel Prize of induced stem cells was delivered more than a decade ago, and the therapies have been slow to follow. But a group of German researchers now describes the tests in primates of a method to repair the heart using new muscles generated from stem cells. The results are promising, if they still do not provide everything we could expect. But they have been enough to begin clinical trials, and similar results are observed in humans.
Heart problems
The heart contains many specialized fabrics, including those that form blood vessels or specialize in the realization of electrical signals. But the key to the heart is a form of specialized muscle cells, called cardiomiocyte. Once the mature heart, the cardiomiocytes stop dividing, which means that you end with a fixed population. Any damage to the heart due to an injury or infection is not repaired, which means that the damage will be cumulative.
This is especially problematic in cases of blocked blood vessels, which can die of hunger repeatedly large areas of the heart of oxygen and nutrients, killing the cardiomiocytes there. This leads to a reduction in cardiac function and, ultimately, can result in death.
However, it turns out that it is relatively easy to convert induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSC, with pluripotent, which means that they can form any type of cell). Then the researchers tried to inject these cardiomiocytes derived from stem cells into damaged hearts in experimental animals, hoping that they will be incorporated into the damaged tissue. But these experiments did not always provide clear benefits for animals.