Revolutionary stem cell trials planned in the UK

A group of British doctors are preparing for human clinical trials that will take a person's bone marrow stem cells, transform them into heart stem cells and inject them into the heart, where they can go to work repairing damage.

"Placing heart stem cells into the heart to repair has a very good chance of working; because the stem cells are the patient's own there are no problems with rejection," said Professor Sian Harding, of Imperial College London.

The British researchers plan to use a technique that was pioneered at the Mayo Clinic. They will remove 40 milliliters of bone marrow from a patient and then grow heart stem cells from them through the use of growth factors. Once injected back into the heart, doctors say they can expect a physical improvement in the patient in as little as two weeks.

"Human heart stem cells repaired damaged areas of mice hearts in our trials," said Dr. Christian Homsy of Cardio3 Biosciences. "And we are convinced that we can do the same in humans."

- read the report from The Telegraph

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