Archive for the ‘Cardiac Stem Cells’ Category

Stem cells harvested from a patient's own heart can be used to help repair muscle damaged during a heart attack, according to a preliminary study published online Monday in The Lancet. While it's too soon to know if the technique will help patients live longer, the study is the second small, promising study of cardiac stem cells in three months.

The new study involved 25 patients who had suffered very serious heart attacks; 24% of their heart's major pumping chamber had been replaced by scar tissue. One year later, doctors saw no improvement in those randomly assigned to get standard care. Among the 17 given stem cells, however, "we reversed about half the injury to the heart," said study author Eduardo Marban, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, in an e-mail. "We dissolved scar and replaced it with living heart muscle."

Warren Sherman, director of stem cell research and regenerative medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, says the study was an important proof of the potential of stem cells - harvested from patients, grown in the lab, then injected back into patients' hearts.

Doctors don't yet know exactly how the stem cells reduce the size of the dead zone of scar tissue, says Kenneth Margulies, director of heart failure and transplant research at the University of Pennsylvania. And while the shrinking suggests that the stem cells are replacing dead cells with living ones, doctors can't definitely prove that without doing a biopsy of the actual cells, he says.

The new study's encouraging results seem to confirm the findings of another small study of heart stem cells, published in The Lancet in November, which also showed an improvement in heart-attack survivors who received the treatment, Margulies says. On the other hand, a third study, found no benefit from stem cells created from patients' own bone marrow.

Four stem-cell patients developed serious complications, compared to only one of the other patients, the study says. That suggests stem-cell therapy has a "satisfactory" safety record, but "is not risk-free," Margulies says.

The idea of regenerating heart tissue "was a pretty far-out idea" only 10 to 20 years ago, Margulies says. There's some evidence that heart tissue is capable of making some small repairs on its own, although not enough to help people who've had a heart attack.

Marban developed the process of growing heart stem cells while working at Johns Hopkins University, which has filed an application for a patent on the idea and licensed it to a company in which Marban has a financial interest. No money from that company was used to pay for the study, which was funded by Cedars-Sinai and the National Institutes of Health.

About 1.3 million Americans have a heart attack each year.

USA Today

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Stem Cells Help Regrow Heart Tissue

February 14, 2012, 3:17 PM EST

By Ryan Flinn

(Adds comment from researcher in 13th paragraph.)

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Stem cells grown from patients’ own cardiac tissue can heal damage once thought to be permanent after a heart attack, according to a study that suggests the experimental approach may one day help stave off heart failure.

In a trial of 25 heart-attack patients, 17 who got the stem cell treatment showed a 50 percent reduction in cardiac scar tissue compared with no improvement for the eight who received standard care. The results, from the first of three sets of clinical trials generally needed for regulatory approval, were published today in the medical journal Lancet.

“The findings in this paper are encouraging,” Deepak Srivastava, director of the San Francisco-based Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, said in an interview. “There’s a dire need for new therapies for people with heart failure, it’s still the No. 1 cause of death in men and women.”

The study, by researchers from Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, tested the approach in patients who recently suffered a heart attack, with the goal that repairing the damage might help stave off failure. While patients getting the stem cells showed no more improvement in heart function than those who didn’t get the experimental therapy, the theory is that new tissue regenerated by the stem cells can strengthen the heart, said Eduardo Marban, the study’s lead author.

“What our trial was designed to do is to reverse the injury once it’s happened,” said Marban, director of Cedars- Sinai Heart Institute. “The quantitative outcome that we had in this paper is to shift patients from a high-risk group to a low- risk group.”

Minimally Invasive

The stem cells were implanted within five weeks after patients suffering heart attacks. Doctors removed heart tissue, about the size of half a raisin, using a minimally invasive procedure that involved a thin needle threaded through the veins. After cultivating the stem cells from the tissue, doctors reinserted them using a second minimally invasive procedure. Patients got 12.5 million cells to 25 million cells.

A year after the procedure, six patients in the stem cell group had serious side effects, including a heart attack, chest pain, a coronary bypass, implantation of a defibrillator, and two other events unrelated to the heart. One of patient’s side effects were possibly linked to the treatment, the study found.

While the main goal of the trial was to examine the safety of the procedure, the decrease in scar tissue in those treated merits a larger study that focuses on broader clinical outcomes, researchers said in the paper.

Heart Regeneration

“If we can regenerate the whole heart, then the patient would be completely normal,” Marban said. “We haven’t fulfilled that yet, but we’ve gotten rid of half of the injury, and that’s a good start.”

While the study resulted in patients having an increase in muscle mass and a shrinkage of scar size, the amount of blood flowing out of the heart, or the ejection fraction, wasn’t different between the control group and stem-cell therapy group. The measurement is important because poor blood flow deprives the body of oxygen and nutrients it needs to function properly, Srivastava said.

“The patients don’t have a functional benefit in this study,” said Srivastava, who wasn’t not involved in the trial.

The technology is being developed by closely held Capricor Inc., which will further test it in 200 patients for the second of three trials typically required for regulatory approval. Marban is a founder of the Los Angeles-based company and chairman of its scientific advisory board. His wife, Linda Marban, is also a founder and chief executive officer.

“We’d like to study patients who are much sicker and see if we can actually spare them early death, or the need for a heart transplant, or a device,” Eduardo Marban said.

--Editors: Angela Zimm, Andrew Pollack

#<184845.409373.2.1.99.7.25># -0- Feb/14/2012 17:13 GMT

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

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Scarred Hearts Can Be Mended With Stem Cell Therapy

Even after recovery, heart attacks can leave a lasting mark on your ticker—scar tissue weakens the muscle and prevents it from functioning as well as it did before seizing up. A pioneering stem-cell procedure, however, could cut the damage in half.

According to the results of a small safety trial by the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and published in the Lancet medical journal, introducing stem cells derived from the patient's own heart have shown an "unprecedented" ability to reduce scarring as well as regenerate healthy cardiac tissue.

During a heart attack, the organ is deprived of oxygen and its tissue begins to die off. As the heart heals from the attack, any damaged muscle is replaced by scar tissue, which prevents the heart from beating properly and pumping the requisite blood flow the body needs.

The CADUCEUS (CArdiosphere-Derived aUtologous stem CElls to Reverse ventricUlar dySfunction) study involved 25 patients—eight serving as the control group, the other 17 actually receiving the treatment. Researchers first performed extensive imaging scans to identify location and severity of scarring, then biopsied a half-raisin-sized piece the patient's heart tissue. Doctors then isolated and cultured stem cells from it and injected the lab-grown stem cells—roughly 12-25 million of them—back into the heart.

After a year, scarring in patients that received the treatment decreased by an astounding fifty percent while the control group showed no decrease in scarring. "These results signal an approaching paradigm shift in the care of heart attack patients," said Shlomo Melmed, dean of the Cedars-Sinai medical faculty. The scars were once believed to be permanent but this technique shows promise as a means to regenerate the damaged muscle. It should be noted however, that the heart's ability to pump did not increase as the scar tissue disappeared.

"While the primary goal of our study was to verify safety, we also looked for evidence that the treatment might dissolve scar and regrow lost heart muscle," Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, told PhysOrg. "This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it. The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests."

Researchers hope to soon begin an expanded clinical trial and, if the results are as promising as these, eventually use the procedure to assist the US's annual 770,000 coronary disease sufferers. [The Lancet via Physorg - BBC News]

Image: Shortkut / Shutterstock

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Stem Cells Could Help Heal Broken Hearts [Medicine]

Myocardial infarction patients may soon have a new treatment option. According to HealthDay News, scientists at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles have successfully repaired heart damage by treating patients with their own cardiac stem cells.

These cardiosphere-derived stem cells have been known to heal damaged tissue, but this is the first study in which heart-attack patients have been treated with stem cells from their own body. Researchers said the cells worked to regrow damaged heart muscle and eventually reversed scarring sustained during the trauma.

Previously, heart attack victims’ only option was to have physicians surgically clear their blocked arteries.

“In our treatment, we dissolved scar and replaced it with living heart muscle,” explained study author Eduardo Marban. “Such ‘therapeutic regeneration’ has long been the holy grail of cell therapy, but had never been accomplished before; we now seem to have done it.”

For the study, researchers followed 25 middle-aged patients with an average age of 53 who had suffered a heart attack. Of this group, 17 underwent stem cell infusions; eight received standard post-heart attack care.

To retrieve the stem cells, doctors inserted a catheter through a neck vein and down to the heart, retrieving a small portion of cells. They were then transplanted back into the patient through a second procedure described as “minimally invasive.”

One year later, stem cell patients showed a 12 percent decrease in scar size and a recovery in muscle strength. Patients who received standard treatment showed no such scar shrinkage.

This research is just the first step, however, and HealthDay notes that findings from the study are preliminary, and were based on just a small group of patients.

The study is published in The Lancet.

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Myocardial Infarction Could Be Treated With Stem Cells

Stem cells grown from patients’ own cardiac tissue can heal damage once thought to be permanent after a heart attack, according to a study that suggests the experimental approach may one day help stave off heart failure.

In a trial of 25 heart-attack patients, 17 who got the stem cell treatment showed a 50 percent reduction in cardiac scar tissue compared with no improvement for the eight who received standard care. The results, from the first of three sets of clinical trials generally needed for regulatory approval, were published today in the medical journal Lancet.

“The findings in this paper are encouraging,” Deepak Srivastava, director of the San Francisco-based Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, said in an interview. “There’s a dire need for new therapies for people with heart failure, it’s still the No. 1 cause of death in men and women.”

The study, by researchers from Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University (43935MF) in Baltimore, tested the approach in patients who recently suffered a heart attack, with the goal that repairing the damage might help stave off failure. While patients getting the stem cells showed no more improvement in heart function than those who didn’t get the experimental therapy, the theory is that new tissue regenerated by the stem cells can strengthen the heart, said Eduardo Marban, the study’s lead author.

“What our trial was designed to do is to reverse the injury once it’s happened,” said Marban, director of Cedars- Sinai Heart Institute. “The quantitative outcome that we had in this paper is to shift patients from a high-risk group to a low- risk group.”

Minimally Invasive

The stem cells were implanted within five weeks after patients suffering heart attacks. Doctors removed heart tissue, about the size of half a raisin, using a minimally invasive procedure that involved a thin needle threaded through the veins. After cultivating the stem cells from the tissue, doctors reinserted them using a second minimally invasive procedure. Patients got 12.5 million cells to 25 million cells.

A year after the procedure, six patients in the stem cell group had serious side effects, including a heart attack, chest pain, a coronary bypass, implantation of a defibrillator, and two other events unrelated to the heart. One of patient’s side effects were possibly linked to the treatment, the study found.

While the main goal of the trial was to examine the safety of the procedure, the decrease in scar tissue in those treated merits a larger study that focuses on broader clinical outcomes, researchers said in the paper.

Heart Regeneration

“If we can regenerate the whole heart, then the patient would be completely normal,” Marban said. “We haven’t fulfilled that yet, but we’ve gotten rid of half of the injury, and that’s a good start.”

While the study resulted in patients having an increase in muscle mass and a shrinkage of scar size, the amount of blood flowing out of the heart, or the ejection fraction, wasn’t different between the control group and stem-cell therapy group. The measurement is important because poor blood flow deprives the body of oxygen and nutrients it needs to function properly, Srivastava said.

“The patients don’t have a functional benefit in this study,” said Srivastava, who wasn’t not involved in the trial.

The technology is being developed by closely held Capricor Inc., which will further test it in 200 patients for the second of three trials typically required for regulatory approval. Marban is a founder of the Los Angeles-based company and chairman of its scientific advisory board. His wife, Lisa Marban, is also a founder and chief executive officer.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Flinn in San Francisco at rflinn@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

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Scarred Hearts Can Be Mended With Novel Stem Cell Therapy, Study Finds

They also help to reduce scar size

Infusion of cardiac stem cells into persons who suffered heart attack recently can help to regenerate their heart muscles, says a study published on February 14, in The Lancet.

Phase I of the study was conducted on 17 patients, who received stems cells, and eight, who received standard care (control group), at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. All of them had had heart attacks about a month before the study began in May 2009. The stem cells were created from the patients' heart tissues.

Visible improvements were seen in those who received infusion of stem cells, compared with the control group at the end of six months and a year. While no change in the scar size was seen in the control group, there was more than 12 per cent reduction in the size at the end of six months in the treatment group.

As scar size is directly related to scar mass, a reduction of 8.4 gram (28 per cent) and almost 13 gram (42 per cent) in scar mass was seen in the treatment group at the end of six months and 12 months.

Surprisingly, scar mass reduction was accompanied by an increase in viable myocardial mass. In fact, on an average, the increase in viable myocardial mass was “about 60 per cent more than scar reduction.” This is significant as it had led to a “partial restoration of lost left ventricular mass in patients with CDCs [cardiosphere-derived cells],” the authors of the study noted.

The study thus “challenges the conventional wisdom that once established, cardiac scarring is permanent, and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored.”

However, a change in scar size was accompanied by only 2 per cent increase in ejection factor (the amount of blood pumped by the heart), which is not considered significant.

While “the reasons for the discrepancy are unclear,” the study noted that “ejection factor at baseline was only moderately impaired, leaving little room for improvement.”

Of the six patients in the treatment group who had serious adverse events, only one was found to be related to the study.

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Cardiac stem cells can restore heart muscles, says study

Dr. Eduardo Marbán, in his laboratory at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. (Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute)

By Eryn Brown, Los Angeles Times / for the Booster Shots blog

February 13, 2012, 5:45 p.m.

Researchers have used cardiac stem cells to regenerate heart muscle in patients who have suffered heart attacks, also known as myocardial infarction.

The small preliminary study, which was conducted by the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, involved 25 patients who had suffered heart attacks in the previous one and a half to three months. 

Seventeen of the study subjects received infusions of stem cells cultured from a raisin-sized chunk of their own heart tissue, which had been removed via catheter. The eight others received standard care. 

During a heart attack, heart tissue is damaged, leaving a scar.  On average, scars in patients who had the stem cell infusions dropped in size from 24% to 12% of the heart, said Dr. Eduardo Marbán, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and lead researcher on the study, which was published online Monday in the journal The Lancet.  (The journal has provided an abstract of the study; subscription is required for the full text.)

In an email, Marbán said he believed that the stem cells repaired the damaged heart muscle "indirectly, by stimulating the heart's endogenous capacity to regrow [which normally lies dormant]." He said that the most surprising aspect of the research team's finding was that the heart was able to regrow healthy tissue. Conventional wisdom holds that cardiac scarring is permanent.

A follow-up study involving about 200 patients is planned for later this year, Marbán added.

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Study: Cardiac stem cells can reverse heart attack damage

Background

Cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) reduce scarring after myocardial infarction, increase viable myocardium, and boost cardiac function in preclinical models. We aimed to assess safety of such an approach in patients with left ventricular dysfunction after myocardial infarction.

Methods In the prospective, randomised CArdiosphere-Derived aUtologous stem CElls to reverse ventricUlar dySfunction (CADUCEUS) trial, we enrolled patients 2—4 weeks after myocardial infarction (with left ventricular ejection fraction of 25—45%) at two medical centres in the USA. An independent data coordinating centre randomly allocated patients in a 2:1 ratio to receive CDCs or standard care. For patients assigned to receive CDCs, autologous cells grown from endomyocardial biopsy specimens were infused into the infarct-related artery 1·5—3 months after myocardial infarction. The primary endpoint was proportion of patients at 6 months who died due to ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, or sudden unexpected death, or had myocardial infarction after cell infusion, new cardiac tumour formation on MRI, or a major adverse cardiac event (MACE; composite of death and hospital admission for heart failure or non-fatal recurrent myocardial infarction). We also assessed preliminary efficacy endpoints on MRI by 6 months. Data analysers were masked to group assignment. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT00893360. Findings

Between May 5, 2009, and Dec 16, 2010, we randomly allocated 31 eligible participants of whom 25 were included in a per-protocol analysis (17 to CDC group and eight to standard of care). Mean baseline left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 39% (SD 12) and scar occupied 24% (10) of left ventricular mass. Biopsy samples yielded prescribed cell doses within 36 days (SD 6). No complications were reported within 24 h of CDC infusion. By 6 months, no patients had died, developed cardiac tumours, or MACE in either group. Four patients (24%) in the CDC group had serious adverse events compared with one control (13%; p=1·00). Compared with controls at 6 months, MRI analysis of patients treated with CDCs showed reductions in scar mass (p=0·001), increases in viable heart mass (p=0·01) and regional contractility (p=0·02), and regional systolic wall thickening (p=0·015). However, changes in end-diastolic volume, end-systolic volume, and LVEF did not differ between groups by 6 months.

Interpretation

We show intracoronary infusion of autologous CDCs after myocardial infarction is safe, warranting the expansion of such therapy to phase 2 study. The unprecedented increases we noted in viable myocardium, which are consistent with therapeutic regeneration, merit further assessment of clinical outcomes.

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Intracoronary cardiosphere-derived cells for heart regeneration after myocardial infarction (CADUCEUS): a prospective ...

Public release date: 13-Feb-2012
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Contact: Sally Stewart
sally.stewart@cshs.org
310-248-6566
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Results from a Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute clinical trial show that treating heart attack patients with an infusion of their own heart-derived cells helps damaged hearts re-grow healthy muscle.

Patients who underwent the stem cell procedure demonstrated a significant reduction in the size of the scar left on the heart muscle by a heart attack. Patients also experienced a sizable increase in healthy heart muscle following the experimental stem cell treatments.

One year after receiving the stem cell treatment, scar size was reduced from 24 percent to 12 percent of the heart in patients treated with cells (an average drop of about 50 percent). Patients in the control group, who did not receive stem cells, did not experience a reduction in their heart attack scars.

The study appears online at http://www.thelancet.com and will be in a future issue of the journal's print edition.

"While the primary goal of our study was to verify safety, we also looked for evidence that the treatment might dissolve scar and regrow lost heart muscle," said Eduardo Marb?n, MD, PhD, the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute who invented the procedures and technology involved in the study. "This has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks. Now we have done it. The effects are substantial, and surprisingly larger in humans than they were in animal tests."

"These results signal an approaching paradigm shift in the care of heart attack patients," said Shlomo Melmed, MD, dean of the Cedars-Sinai medical faculty and the Helene A. and Philip E. Hixon Chair in Investigative Medicine. "In the past, all we could do was to try to minimize heart damage by promptly opening up an occluded artery. Now, this study shows there is a regenerative therapy that may actually reverse the damage caused by a heart attack."

The clinical trial, named CADUCEUS (CArdiosphere-Derived aUtologous stem CElls to Reverse ventricUlar dySfunction), was part of a Phase I investigative study approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

As an initial part of the study, in 2009, Marb?n and his team completed the world's first procedure in which a patient's own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells. The specialized cells were then injected back into the patient's heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle in a heart that had been injured by a heart attack.

The 25 patients -- average age of 53 -- who participated in this completed study experienced heart attacks that left them with damaged heart muscle. Each patient underwent extensive imaging scans so doctors could pinpoint the exact location and severity of the scars wrought by the heart attack. Patients were treated at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Eight patients served as controls in the study, receiving conventional medical care for heart attack survivors, including prescription medicine, exercise recommendations and dietary advice.

The other 17 patients who were randomized to receive the stem cells underwent a minimally invasive biopsy, under local anesthesia. Using a catheter inserted through a vein in the patient's neck, doctors removed small pieces of heart tissue, about half the size of a raisin. The biopsied heart tissue was then taken to Marb?n's specialized lab at Cedars-Sinai, using methods he invented to culture and multiply the cells.

In the third and final step, the now-multiplied heart-derived cells ? approximately 12 million to 25 million ? were reintroduced into the patient's coronary arteries during a second, minimally invasive [catheter] procedure.

Patients who received stem cell treatment experienced an average of 50 percent reduction in their heart attack scars 12 months after infusion while patients who received standard medical management did not experience shrinkage in the damaged tissue.

"This discovery challenges the conventional wisdom that, once established, scar is permanent and that, once lost, healthy heart muscle cannot be restored," said Marb?n, The Mark S. Siegel Family Professor.

The process to grow cardiac-derived stem cells involved in the study was developed earlier by Marb?n when he was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. The university has filed for a patent on that intellectual property and has licensed it to a company in which Dr. Marb?n has a financial interest. No funds from that company were used to support the clinical study. All funding was derived from the National Institutes of Health and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

###

About the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute

The Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute is internationally recognized for outstanding heart care built on decades of innovation and leading-edge research. From cardiac imaging and advanced diagnostics to surgical repair of complex heart problems to the training of the heart specialists of tomorrow and research that is deepening medical knowledge and practice, the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute is known around the world for excellence and innovations.

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First-of-its-kind stem cell study re-grows healthy heart muscle in heart attack patients

30-01-2012 06:10 Professor Michael Schneider of Imperial College tells Alan Keys about how stem cell research is leading to treatments for heart disease. Michael describes how the availability of stem cells allows his team to determine the molecules involved in heart cell death and also how to protect those cells from death during a heart attack. Michael foresees a near future where stem cells are combined with other therapies to both repair hearts and enable hearts to self-repair. Alan Keys had his own heart repaired during an operation some years ago and currently chairs a British Heart Foundation patients committee. The British Heart Foundation part-fund the work of Michael's team at Imperial College. This interview was edited down from the original 35 minutes conversation. Read the transcript here: bit.ly Read more about Michael here: bit.ly and here: bit.ly

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Stem cells and heart repair - Video

13-01-2012 08:41 This is human heart muscle in a dish, beating spontaneously. It was made by Dr Lei Ye of the Stem Cell Institute from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC). These were made by our iPSC facility from human skin cells into which 4 specific genes were temporarily introduced. The heart muscle cells were enabled to develop from the iPSC using a special medium and substrate. It is hoped to use cells like this for the treatment of heart disease by replacing heart muscle that has been destroyed.

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Human heart muscle in a dish, beating spontaneously. - Video

14-12-2011 20:22 Human tissue cells derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells recapitulate many of the characteristics and functionality expected of in vivo cell types. iCell® Cardiomyocytes are derived from human IPS cells and are currently being used in both drug discovery and basic research in Industrial and Academic settings. Dr. Eric Chiao of Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche) will lead this presentation and provide data showing the characterization and utility of iCell Cardiomyocytes, how they are being used in drug development, and how they are increasing our understanding of basic human cardiomyocyte cellular biology.

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Utilizing Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes for Early Safety Screening - Webinar Presentation - Video

14-12-2011 20:22 Human tissue cells derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells recapitulate many of the characteristics and functionality expected of in vivo cell types. iCell® Cardiomyocytes are derived from human IPS cells and are currently being used in both drug discovery and basic research in Industrial and Academic settings. Dr. Eric Chiao of Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. (Roche) will lead this presentation and provide data showing the characterization and utility of iCell Cardiomyocytes, how they are being used in drug development, and how they are increasing our understanding of basic human cardiomyocyte cellular biology.

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Utilizing Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes for Early Safety Screening - Webinar Presentation - Video

29-01-2012 23:26 Fourteen patients were randomized to see if adipose-derived adult stem cells would help limit the damage from an acute heart attack. Infarct size was decreased by 50%, the perfusion defect was 17% smaller, and the left ventriclular ejection fraction was increased about 6% better than the control group. Stem cell vocabulary was reviewed and highlighted that there are embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells and that sources of stem cell are from bone marrow, adipose tissue, blood, umbilical cord blood and from cloned embryonic cell lines. Stem cells can develop into 200 different cell types.

Excerpt from:
Stem Cells Help Heart Attack Victims - Video

"We want to come up with technology to replace defective tissue with beating heart tissue made from stem cells sloughed off by the infant into the amniotic fluid," said Rice bioengineer Jeffrey Jacot, who led the study. "Our findings serve as proof of principle that stem cells from amniotic fluid have the potential to be used for such purposes."

The results were published online by the journal Tissue Engineering Part A. The research was conducted at Texas Children's Hospital.

According to the American Heart Association, about 32,000 infants a year in the United States are born with congenital heart defects, 10,000 of which either result in death or require some sort of surgical intervention before they're a year old.

Jacot, an assistant professor of bioengineering based at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative and director of the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory at the Congenital Heart Surgery Service at Texas Children's Hospital, hopes to grow heart patches from the amniotic stem cells of a fetus diagnosed in the womb with a congenital heart defect. Because the cells would be a genetic match, there would be no risk of rejection, he said.

"Between 60 and 80 percent of severe heart defects are caught by ultrasound," he said. "Ultimately, when a heart defect is diagnosed in utero, we will extract amniotic cells. By birth, we will have made tissue for the repair out of the infant's own cells. The timing is critical because the surgery needs to be done within weeks of the infant's birth."

Enlarge

Cells derived from amniotic fluid display a shape and typical cell-cell connections indicative of endothelial cells, which form blood vessels, after treatment with specific growth factors. Researchers at Rice University are working with amniotic stem cells with the goal of growing living tissue that matches infants born with congenital heart defects. Credit: Jacot Lab/Rice University/Texas Children's Hospital

Surgeons currently use such nonbiological materials as Dacron or Teflon, which do not contract or grow with the patient, or native pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. Pericardium generally forms scar tissue and can only be used in the first operation. Both solutions require further operations and raise the risk of cardiac arrest, Jacot said.

Stem cells, the focus of both great hope and great controversy, are the cells in every organism that differentiate into specialized cells in the body. Stem cells drawn from human embryos are known to have great potential for treatment of defects and disease, but research into their use has been limited by political and other concerns, Jacot said.

That isn't the case with cells found in amniotic fluid, he said. Amniotic fluid is the liquid that protects and nourishes a fetus in the womb. Fluid is sometimes taken from pregnant women through amniocentesis, but cells for the Jacot lab's studies were drawn from women undergoing treatment for twin-twin transfusion syndrome. "This is where two identical twins share a placenta and one is getting more blood than the other. It's not common," he said, noting that Texas Children's is one of the few hospitals that treat the syndrome. "Part of the general treatment is to remove fluid with the goal of saving both lives, and that fluid is usually discarded."

Jacot said other labs have tested amniotic fluid as a source of stem cells with promising results. "Our work is based on five years of work from other labs in which they've discovered a very small population of amniotic stem cells – maybe one in every 10,000 – that naturally express markers characteristic of embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells."

Jacot and his team created a population of amniotic stem cells through a complex process that involved extracting cells via centrifugation and fluorescence-activated sorting. They sequestered cells with a surface receptor, c-kit, a marker associated with stem cells.

The cells were cultured in endothelial growth media to make them suitable for growing into a network of capillaries, Jacot said. When the cells were placed in a bio-scaffold, a framework used for tissue engineering, they did just that.

"Anything we make will need a blood supply," he said. "That's why the first cell type we looked for is one that can form blood vessels. We need to know we can get a capillary network throughout tissue that we can then connect to the infant's blood supply."

Jacot said the cells they tested grow very fast. "We've done calculations to show that, with what we get from amniocentesis, we could more than grow an entire heart by birth," he said. "That would be really tough, but it gives us confidence that we will be able to quickly grow patches of tissue outside of the body that can then be sewn inside."

He said construction of a functional patch is some years away, but his lab is making progress. While embryonic cells have the most potential for such a project, amniotic cells already show signs of an ability to turn into heart muscle, he said.

Co-authors are graduate students Omar Benavides and Jennifer Petsche, both of Rice; and Kenneth Moise Jr. and Anthony Johnson, now professors at the Texas Center for Maternal and Fetal Treatment at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston with appointments at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and CAREER programs, the Houston-Rice Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med into Grad Program and the Virginia and L.E. Simmons Family Foundation.

More information: http://online.lieb … EA.2011.0392

Provided by Rice University (news : web)

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Scientists make strides toward fixing infant hearts

Posted: Monday, February 6, 2012 10:00 am | Updated: 11:50 am, Mon Feb 6, 2012.

Researchers at Rice University and Texas Children's Hospital have turned stem cells from amniotic fluid into cells that form blood vessels.

Their success offers hope that such stem cells may be used to grow tissue patches to repair infant hearts.

"We want to come up with technology to replace defective tissue with beating heart tissue made from stem cells sloughed off by the infant into the amniotic fluid," said Rice bioengineer Jeffrey Jacot, who led the study. "Our findings serve as proof of principle that stem cells from amniotic fluid have the potential to be used for such purposes."

The results were published online by the journal Tissue Engineering Part A. The research was conducted at Texas Children’s Hospital.

According to the American Heart Association, about 32,000 infants a year in the United States are born with congenital heart defects, 10,000 of which either result in death or require some sort of surgical intervention before they're a year old.

Jacot, an assistant professor of bioengineering based at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative and of the Pediatric Cardiac Bioengineering Laboratory at the Congenital Heart Surgery Service at Texas Children’s Hospital, hopes to grow heart patches from the amniotic stem cells of a fetus diagnosed in the womb with a congenital heart defect. He said, because the cells would be a genetic match, there would be no risk of rejection.

"Between 60 and 80 percent of severe heart defects are caught by ultrasound," he said. "Ultimately, when a heart defect is diagnosed in utero, we will extract amniotic cells. By birth, we will have made tissue for the repair out of the infant's own cells. The timing is critical because the surgery needs to be done within weeks of the infant's birth."

Surgeons currently use such nonbiological materials as Dacron or Teflon, which do not contract or grow with the patient, or native pericardium, the membrane that surrounds the heart. Pericardium generally forms scar tissue and can only be used in the first operation. Both solutions require further operations and raise the risk of cardiac arrest, Jacot said.

Stem cells, the focus of both great hope and great controversy, are the cells in every organism that differentiate into specialized cells in the body. Stem cells drawn from human embryos are known to have great potential for treatment of defects and disease, but research into their use has been limited by political and other concerns, Jacot said.

That isn't the case with cells found in amniotic fluid, he said. Amniotic fluid is the liquid that protects and nourishes a fetus in the womb. Fluid is sometimes taken from pregnant women through amniocentesis, but cells for the Jacot lab's studies were drawn from women undergoing treatment for twin-twin transfusion syndrome.

"This is where two identical twins share a placenta and one is getting more blood than the other. It's not common," he said, noting that Texas Children's is one of the few hospitals that treat the syndrome. "Part of the general treatment is to remove fluid with the goal of saving both lives, and that fluid is usually discarded."

Jacot said other labs have tested amniotic fluid as a source of stem cells with promising results.

"Our work is based on five years of work from other labs in which they've discovered a very small population of amniotic stem cells – maybe one in every 10,000 – that naturally express markers characteristic of embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells."

Jacot and his team created a population of amniotic stem cells through a complex process that involved extracting cells via centrifugation and fluorescence-activated sorting. They sequestered cells with a surface receptor, c-kit, a marker associated with stem cells.

The cells were cultured in endothelial growth media to make them suitable for growing into a network of capillaries, Jacot said. When the cells were placed in a bio-scaffold, a framework used for tissue engineering, they did just that.

"Anything we make will need a blood supply," he said. "That's why the first cell type we looked for is one that can form blood vessels. We need to know we can get a capillary network throughout tissue that we can then connect to the infant's blood supply."

Jacot said the cells they tested grow very fast.

"We've done calculations to show that, with what we get from amniocentesis, we could more than grow an entire heart by birth," he said. "That would be really tough, but it gives us confidence that we will be able to quickly grow patches of tissue outside of the body that can then be sewn inside."

He said construction of a functional patch is some years away, but his lab is making progress. While embryonic cells have the most potential for such a project, amniotic cells already show signs of an ability to turn into heart muscle, he said.

Co-authors are graduate students Omar Benavides and Jennifer Petsche, both of Rice; and Kenneth Moise Jr. and Anthony Johnson, now professors at the Texas Center for Maternal and Fetal Treatment at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston with appointments at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and CAREER programs, the Houston-Rice Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med into Grad Program and the Virginia and L.E. Simmons Family Foundation.

(Submitted by Rice University; Posted by Emiy Moser, emoser@hcnonline.com)

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Rice University, Texas Children’s Hospital researchers makes strides towards fixing infants hearts

Public release date: 2-Feb-2012
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Contact: ESC Press Office
press@escardio.org
33-049-294-8627
European Society of Cardiology

For cardiovascular scientists around the world London 2012 not only signifies the Olympics but also another major international event ? the second Frontiers in Cardiovascular Biology (FCVB) meeting. FCVB 2012 will show case the best and latest science from the cardiovascular arena, giving delegates unique insights into the future of cardiovascular medicine, and journalists great opportunities for covering ground breaking stories "The meeting brings together in one venue possibly the greatest concentration of cardiovascular scientists in the world," says Professor Sian Harding, the FCVB 2012 chairman of the Core Scientific Committee. "Delegates will find themselves right at the cutting edge, with opportunities to learn about innovations before they've even started along the translational science trajectory. There'll be lots of valuable networking possibilities for people at all stages of their careers."

The conference, organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science (CBCS) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) together with eight ESC Working Groups and six European basic science societies, builds on the success of the first FCVB meeting, held in Berlin in 2010, which attracted over 700 delegates. With abstract submissions up 30% for FCVB 2012, the organisers (are expecting between 800 and 1,000 delegates. "With the venue having capacity for only 1,000 delegates we're hoping that we won't be forced to close registration early," cautions Harding, from Imperial College (London, UK). "We deliberately chose the South Kensington Campus of Imperial College in London to give a clear signal that it's an academic enterprise, projecting a strong ethos of the working scientist. All delegates should feel really comfortable in this setting," says Harding.

The conference, covering both cardiac and vascular science, has been designed to be cross disciplinary. "We've highlighted integrative scientific work that should be of interest to both cardiac and vascular researchers. To stimulate scientific progress it's vitally important to promote good communications between disciplines and avoid scientists becoming isolated in their specific niches. It's an approach that helps younger researchers to develop sustainable careers," says Professor Axel Pries, chairman of the ESC Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science.

Further synergy, he adds, has been created by the good mix of basic scientists and clinicians attending the meeting, with a strong translational component. "To allow advances to reach the bedside as quickly as possible we need to know from the outset the questions clinicians want answering. Equally clinicians need to understand from scientists the potential for basic science. To achieve the best outcomes we need to foster good two-way communications," says Pries, from the Charit? Hospital (Berlin, Germany).

The major themes running throughout the programme include bioimagining, degeneration and regeneration and inflammation.

Bioimaging: In recognition of Imperial College's world class bioimaging facilities, the congress will focus on advances allowing new ways to image cardiac myocytes as well as atherosclerotic plaques, and the movement of blood and formation of clots. Regenerative medicine: The programme will explore advances in pluripotent stem cells and highlight progress towards clinical treatments. Sessions will consider the potential for cells taken from the skin, teeth and hair follicles of patients to be transformed into cardiac myocytes, and the new concept of "disease in a dish" that uses stem cells to test new ideas and drugs. Inflammation: Two symposia will present new insights in the central role of inflammation in development of atherosclerosis, emphasising the potential for translation into novel therapeutic strategies.

Altogether 25 symposia have been organised at FCVB 2012 across three parallel sessions, with hot topics for reporters including genetics, vascular remodeling in ageing, therapeutic targets in calcium handling, and mitochondria biogenesis. In the symposia, presentations from invited speakers will be mixed with shorter talks relevant to the area, selected from submitted abstracts, ensuring that the latest data is presented in every field. "This format enables the inclusion of both the most recent data and strong involvement from younger investigators who'll find themselves speaking on the same platform as their heroes," says Harding. "Particular emphasis has been placed on participation from young investigators because they're the people who're continually revitalizing the science base."

There will be a range of internationally acclaimed key note speakers including:

Professor Salvador Moncada (London, UK) talking about competition in scientific research; Professor Deepak Srivastava (San Francisco, USA) giving exciting information on transdifferentiation of somatic cells into cardiomyocytes; Professor Peter Davies (Philadelphia, USA), giving an expert's view on gene regulation and blood flow; Professor Ron Heeren (Amsterdam, NL) showing sophisticated, new molecular imaging techniques of the heart; Professor Peter Carmeliet (Leuven, BE) discussing maturation of new blood vessels.

Other highlights of FCVB 2012 include a vibrant exhibition area, featuring the latest microscopic instrumentation, tissue culture and molecular biology equipment, and two satellite translational symposia featuring antiplatelet treatments in acute coronary syndromes and coagulation and anticoagulation. The lively social programme includes an informal party hosted at the student's union (Metric Club) giving delegates an opportunity to mingle with colleagues and friends on a "typical London night out".

###

Authors: ESC Press Office
Tel: 33-4-92-94-86-27
Fax: 33-4-92-94-86-69
Email: press@escardio.org

Notes to editor

Abstracts

Altogether 560 abstracts featuring the latest cardiovascular research will be presented at FCVB. In addition to abstracts featured in the 25 symposia, time has also been scheduled for six selected abstracts to be presented orally in a dedicated oral abstract session, and furthermore six finalists in the young investigator competition will have the opportunity to present their research orally.

Young scientists

Around 50 travel grants have been made available to encourage young scientists to attend FCVB, together will low registration fees for students.

About the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)

The European Society of Cardiology (ESC) represents more than 71,200 cardiology professionals across Europe and the Mediterranean. Its mission is to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease in Europe.

About Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB)

Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) is a biennial meeting organised by the ESC Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science (CBCS) together with eight ESC Working Groups and six European basic science societies (Sister Societies). The ESC working groups include Atherosclerosis and Vascular Biology; Cardiac Cellular Electrophysiology; Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Drug Therapy; Cellular Biology of the Heart; Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation; Development, Anatomy and Pathology; Myocardial Function; and Thrombos
is. The sister societies include European Vascular Biology Organization; International Society for Heart Research;-European Section, European Council for Cardiovascular Research; European Society for Microcirculation; European Atherosclerosis Society; and Association for European Cardiovascular Pathology.

Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology 2012 30 Mar 2012 - 01 Apr 2012 , London - United Kingdom http://www.escardio.org/congresses/cardiovascular-biology-2012/Pages/welcome.aspx

About press registration

Free press registration is conducted online via "My ESC" supported by presentation of a press card or letter of assignment with proof of three published articles together with the filled in and signed embargo form.

Online registration is now open. http://www.escardio.org/congresses/cardiovascular-biology-2012/registration-hotels/Pages/registration.aspx#tabs-4

On-site registration opens 30 March 2012 at 7:30 hours in London

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FCVB 2012: The scientific Olympics!

Store-A-Tooth™, a service of Provia Labs, made its debut at the 2012 Yankee Dental Congress, held January 26-28 in Boston. Store-A-Tooth is partnering with dentists throughout New England to offer the highest quality in dental stem cell banking to their patients, enabling parents to preserve the stem cells from their children’s teeth for future therapies in regenerative medicine and dentistry.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) January 31, 2012

Store-A-Tooth™, a service of Provia Laboratories LLC, participated in last week’s 2012 Yankee Dental Congress in Boston. Dentists from across New England enrolled with Store-A-Tooth to offer the leading dental stem cell banking service to their patients, enabling families to preserve their own stem cells for future therapies in regenerative medicine and dentistry.

“One of the biggest advances in adult stem cell technology is the discovery of stem cells in dental pulp tissue by NIH researchers in 2000. Dental stem cells have the ability to differentiate into various cell types, such as osteoblasts, odontoblasts, adipocytes, neuronal, and cardiac cells. Stem cell based therapies are currently being studied around the world to treat multiple degenerative diseases. Awareness is rapidly building about this research and their potential to someday be used for a range of clinical applications,” says Dr. Nicholas Perrotta, DMD, a Store-A-Tooth provider who has been offering dental stem cell preservation services at his practice in Medford, MA for over five years.

Dental stem cells have the potential to be used in both dental and medical applications, and have already been used to regenerate alveolar jaw bone and to treat periodontal disease in human studies. Dental stem cells are being studied by scientists around the world to see how they could someday play a role in treating conditions such as diabetes, spinal cord injury, stroke, heart attack and neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. In fact, new research has shown that dental stem cells can be transformed into islet-like cell aggregates which produce insulin in a glucose-dependent manner—a significant step toward eventually developing stem-cell therapies for type 1 (juvenile) diabetes.

Dr. Brian M. Smith, head of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Cooper University Hospital with a practice in Sewell, NJ sees the potential for dental stem cells to bring innovation to the dental profession as well as new care options for patients. “I believe dental stem cell research could result in a broad range of medical and dental benefits, as discoveries in the laboratory lead to new therapies in everyday practice, making regenerative dentistry and medicine a standard of care. Our job as dental professionals is to help make this vision a reality.”

Provia Laboratories partners with dental practices to offer Store-A-Tooth to patients. The free program makes it easy for dental professionals to inform patients about dental stem cell preservation and includes patient education, training, free CE, professional discounts and instructions for tooth collection. Stem cells may be harvested from dental pulp from any healthy tooth: baby teeth, extracted molars/wisdom teeth, and teeth pulled for orthodontia.

During Yankee Dental, Provia announced a new Store-A-Tooth Territory Manager for New England – Terry Tesak. Based in Massachusetts, Terry brings 12 years of experience working with dental professionals to bring innovation to leading dental practices. Terry was part of the team at Align Technology Inc., the makers of Invisalign, and has also worked for Patterson Dental Supply and Dentsply.

For more information about Store-A-Tooth, call 1-877-857-5753 or visit our website to see recent news stories about dental stem cell banking, http://www.store-a-tooth.com/media/video-news-stories.

About Provia Laboratories, LLC                            

Provia Laboratories, LLC (http://www.provialabs.com) is a healthcare services company headquartered near Boston, Massachusetts which specializes in high quality biobanking (preservation of biological specimens). The company’s Store-A-Tooth™ service platform enables the collection, transport, processing, and storage of dental stem cells for potential use in future stem-cell therapies. The company advises industrial, academic, and governmental clients on matters related to the preservation of biological specimens for research and clinical use. In addition, Provia offers a variety of products for use in complex biobanking environments to improve sample logistics, security, and quality. Provia Labs is a member of ISBER, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories. For more information on dental stem cells, call 1-877-867-5753, visit http://www.store-a-tooth.com or http://www.facebook.com/storeatooth, or follow us @StoreATooth.

###

Store-A-Tooth
Provia Laboratories, LLC
877-867-5753
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Store-A-Tooth Dental Stem Cell Banking Featured at Yankee Dental Congress 2012

Although people do regularly recover from heart attacks, the heart itself never entirely "gets better." This is because cardiac muscle tissue doesn't regenerate - any that dies in the event of a heart attack will only be replaced with inactive scar tissue, and the heart's performance will be permanently compromised as a result. Scientists have responded by trying to develop heart patches made of materials that act as nanoscale scaffolds, upon which new cardiomyocytes (heart cells) can grow. Materials used for these scaffolds have included fibrin, nanofiber, gold nanowires and polymer. Now, new research is suggesting that silkworm silk may be a better choice than any of those.

For some time now, scientists from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research have been among those researching ways of growing cardiac tissue on three-dimensional scaffolds. Everything that they looked at, however, had limitations.

"Whether natural or artificial in origin, all of the tested fibers had serious disadvantages," said research group leader Felix Engel. "They were either too brittle, were attacked by the immune system or did not enable the heart muscle cells to adhere correctly to the fibers."

It turned out, however, that scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur had been working on an alternative - coin-sized disks made from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm. Not only is the silk coarser than other silk fibers, making it better-suited for use as a scaffold, but its surface also contains proteins that facilitate the adhesion of cardiomyocytes. When the silk was tested at the Max Planck Institute, heart cells from rats that were seeded onto it were able to remain in communication with one another, and beat synchronously for 20 days.

Before the silk patches can ever see clinical use, however, the scientists need to figure out a safe way of procuring a sufficient amount of heart cells from the patient. Using stem cells is a possibility, although finding a way of getting those to convert into heart cells still poses a challenge.

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Silkworms may help repair damaged hearts

JUPITER, Fla., Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BioRestorative Therapies, Inc. (OTCQB: BRTX) ("BRT") today announced that it has entered into a License Agreement with Regenerative Sciences, LLC ("RS") with respect to certain stem cell-related technology and clinical treatment procedures developed by RS. The treatment is an advanced stem cell injection procedure that may offer relief from lower back pain, buttock and leg pain, or numbness and tingling in the legs or feet as a result of bulging and herniated discs.

To date, over 40 procedures have been performed on patients. It is a minimally invasive out-patient procedure, and objective MRI data and patient outcomes for this novel injection procedure show positive results with limited patient downtime. BRT intends to utilize the existing treatment and outcome data, as well as further research, to prepare for clinical trials in the United States.

Pursuant to the agreement, BRT will obtain an exclusive license to utilize or sub-license a certain medical device for the administration of specific cells and/or cell products to the precise locations within the damaged disc and/or spine (and other parts of the body, if applicable) and an exclusive license to utilize or sublicense a certain method for culturing cells for use in repairing damaged areas. The agreement contemplates a closing of the license grant in March 2012, subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions. 

Mark Weinreb, Chairman and CEO of BRT, said, "This possible alternative to back surgery represents a large market for BRT once it begins offering the procedure to patients who might be facing spinal fusions or back surgery (which often times is unsuccessful). By delivering a particular cell population using a proprietary medical device that inserts a specialized needle into the disc and injects cells for repair and re-population, BRT hopes to revolutionize how degenerative disc disease will be treated." 

About BioRestorative Therapies, Inc.
BioRestorative Therapies, Inc.'s goal is to become a medical center of excellence using cell and tissue protocols, primarily involving a patient's own (autologous) adult stem cells (non-embryonic), allowing patients to undergo cellular-based treatments. In June 2011, the Company launched a technology that involves the use of a brown fat cell-based therapeutic/aesthetic program, known as the ThermoStem™ Program.  The ThermoStem™ Program will focus on treatments for obesity, weight loss, diabetes, hypertension, other metabolic disorders and cardiac deficiencies and will involve the study of stem cells, several genes, proteins and/or mechanisms that are related to these diseases and disorders.  As more and more cellular therapies become standard of care, the Company believes its strength will be its focus on the unity of medical and scientific explanations for clinical procedures and outcomes for future personal medical applications.  The Company also plans to offer and sell facial creams and products under the Stem Pearls™ brand.

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors and other risks, including those set forth in the Company's Form 10, as amended, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements.

CONTACT:  Mark Weinreb, CEO, Tel: (561) 904-6070, Fax: (561) 429-5684

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BioRestorative Therapies Signs License Agreement for Stem Cell Disc/Spine Procedure

SOURCE: Cytori Therapeutics, Inc.

SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwire - Jan 30, 2012) - Cytori Therapeutics (NASDAQ: CYTX) has received an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) approval from the U.S. FDA to begin the ATHENA trial. ATHENA will investigate the use of the Celution® System, an innovative medical device to prepare adipose-derived stem and regenerative cells (ADRCs) to treat a form of coronary heart disease, chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI). The IDE application was originally submitted to the FDA in December 2011.

ATHENA is a multi-center, randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, pilot trial to investigate the use of autologous, clinical-grade ADRCs, processed at the point-of-care with Cytori's proprietary Celution® System. The trial will enroll up to 45 patients with no-option CMI who have limited therapeutic options. It will evaluate a variety of clinical and functional outcomes, including safety, peak oxygen consumption (mVO2), and clinical outcomes at 12-months.

"Following our pre-IDE meeting with the FDA, we received constructive guidance and implemented the Agency's recommendations, ultimately resulting in rapid approval to initiate the ATHENA trial," said Christopher J. Calhoun, chief executive officer for Cytori. "We look forward to working with the FDA on further defining our clinical strategy in the U.S."

Previously, Cytori reported six and 18-month trial data from PRECISE, a European clinical trial for this same indication showing improvement in mVO2. In Europe, Cytori has applied to expand its Celution® System CE Mark to include no-option CMI claims based on data from the PRECISE trial. Cytori is also enrolling ADVANCE, a European pivotal trial investigating the Celution® System for acute myocardial infarction (heart attacks).

In the U.S., it is estimated that 120,000 to 250,000 patients are diagnosed each year with chronic myocardial ischemia, a subset of the approximate 5.8 million patients who currently have some form of heart failure. CMI patients typically have undergone multiple revascularization procedures that have not improved their condition and are at a stage where they have few therapeutic options remaining.

About Cytori
Cytori is a leader in providing patients and physicians around the world with medical technologies that harness the potential of adult regenerative cells from adipose tissue. The Celution® System family of medical devices and instruments is being sold into the European and Asian cosmetic and reconstructive surgery markets and available in the United States only for use as an investigational device under Cytori's FDA approved IDE. Our StemSource® product line is sold globally for cell banking and research applications. Our PureGraft® products are available in North America and Europe for fat grafting procedures. http://www.cytori.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding events, trends and business prospects, which may affect our future operating results and financial position, such as the successful initiation of a clinical trial of the Company's Celution® System for chronic myocardial ischemia, our efforts to expand our CE Mark. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results and financial position to differ materially. Some of these risks include clinical and regulatory uncertainties, such as those associated with the ATHENA clinical trial, including risks in the collection and results of clinical data, final clinical outcomes, dependence on third party performance, and other risks and uncertainties described under the "Risk Factors" in Cytori's Securities and Exchange Commission Filings. We assume no responsibility to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events, trends or circumstances after the date they are made.

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Cytori Receives Approval From FDA to Initiate U.S. Cardiac Cell Therapy Trial; Investigational Device Exemption (IDE ...

Of all the body’s organs, the human heart is probably the one most primed for
performance and efficiency. Decade after decade, it continues
to pump blood around our bodies. However, this performance
optimisation comes at a high price: over the course of
evolution, almost all of the body’s own regeneration mechanisms
in the heart have become deactivated. As a result, a heart
attack is a very serious event for patients; dead cardiac cells
are irretrievably lost. The consequence of this is a permanent
deterioration in the heart’s pumping power and in the patient’s
quality of life.

In their attempt to develop a treatment for the repair of
cardiac tissue, scientists are pursuing the
aim of growing replacement tissue in the laboratory, which
could then be used to produce replacement patches for the
repair of damaged cardiac muscle. The reconstruction of a
three-dimensional structure poses a challenge here. Experiments
have already been carried out with many different materials
that could provide a scaffold substance for the loading of cardiac muscle cells.

“Whether natural or artificial in origin, all of the tested
fibres had serious disadvantages,” says Felix Engel, Research
Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung
Research in Bad Nauheim. “They were either too brittle, were
attacked by the immune system or did not enable the heart
muscle cells to adhere correctly to the fibres.” However, the
scientists have now found a possible solution in Kharagpur,
India.

At the university there, coin-sized disks are being produced
from the cocoon of the tasar silkworm (Antheraea mylitta). According to
Chinmoy Patra, an Indian scientist who now works in Engel’s
laboratory, the fibre produced by the tasar silkworm displays
several advantages over the other substances tested. “The
surface has protein structures that facilitate the adhesion of
heart muscle cells. It’s also coarser than other silk fibres.”
This is the reason why the muscle cells grow well on it and can
form a three-dimensional tissue structure. “The communication
between the cells was intact and they beat synchronously over a
period of 20 days, just like real heart muscle,” says Engel.

Despite these promising results, clinical application of the
fibre is not currently on the agenda. “Unlike in our study,
which we carried out using rat cells, the problem of obtaining
sufficient human cardiac cells as starting material has not yet
been solved,” says Engel. It is thought that the patient’s own
stem cells could be used as starting material to avoid
triggering an immune reaction. However, exactly how the
conversion of the stem cells into cardiac muscle cells works
remains a mystery.

More information: Chinmoy Patra, Sarmistha Talukdar,
Tatyana Novoyatleva, Siva R. Velagala, Christian Mühlfeld,
Banani Kundu, Subhas C. Kundu, Felix B. Engel
Silk protein fibroin from Antheraea mylitta for cardiac tissue
engineering, Biomaterials, Advance Online Publication
Januar 10, 2012

Provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (news : web)

Continue reading here:
Scientists use silk from the tasar silkworm as a scaffold for heart tissue

06-10-2011 17:25 A doctor becomes patient and gives his testimony on stem cell treatment he received to overcome heart failure.

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Stem Cell Treatment for Heart Failure - Video

27-01-2012 21:30 TORONTO - Doctors have performed Ontario's first cardiac stem cell transplant using cells from the patient's own bone marrow.

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Cardiac Stem Cell Transplant - Video

27-01-2012 21:30 TORONTO - Doctors have performed Ontario's first cardiac stem cell transplant using cells from the patient's own bone marrow.

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Cardiac Stem Cell Transplant - Video