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Hope Stem Cells will Help Heart Patients
ANNA VLACH
The Advertiser
11 July 2006
SUFFERERS of Australia's number one killer - cardiovascular disease - are being offered new hope of treatment by world-first stem cell research in Adelaide.
The purified stem cell technology is showing early promise and will give sufferers a new treatment option using cells harvested from their own bone marrow.
The aim is to help regenerate damaged heart tissue. While it is not designed to supersede current treatment, it gives doctors another option for patients with heart failure who are not responding to standard management, such as medication, surgery and pacemakers.
Funded by the National Heart Foundation, the research was unique because it used high purity stem cells extracted from adult bone marrow, cardiologist Dr Peter Psaltis said.
"There has been quite a lot of work in developing purification techniques with bone and cartilage, but its use in cardiac research is really only beginning."
Six months into the study, Dr Psaltis said the team had already noted promising results.
"Previously human cells were injected into rats that had had heart attacks and the damage was reversed or repaired a lot by new blood vessels formed in the heart."
Working out of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, the team includes University of Adelaide's Professor Stephen Worthley and Dr Andrew Zannettino and Dr Stan Gronthos from the Hanson Institute.
The team planned to test the technology in larger animals, such as sheep, with human clinical trials expected to take place in two to three years.
"Should the treatment become available worldwide we would be looking at a 5-10 year time frame," Dr Psaltis said.
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