Nature Reviews Stem Cell Heart Treatments

The journal, Nature, has published a review article, "Stem-cell therapy for cardiac disease,"
about treatment of heart disease with stem cells, focusing on the many types of cells that are being used in research, including bone marrow derived stem cells and progenitors and "resident" cardiomyocyte stem cells. The latter are actually found in the heart and can be harvested from the patient who needs them and used to repair damaged heart disease.

The abstract promises more than I ever thought I'd read in a "First tier" journal.

Heart failure is the leading cause of death worldwide, and current therapies only delay progression of the disease. Laboratory experiments and recent clinical trials suggest that cell-based therapies can improve cardiac function, and the implications of this for cardiac regeneration are causing great excitement. Bone-marrow-derived progenitor cells and other progenitor cells can differentiate into vascular cell types, restoring blood flow. More recently, resident cardiac stem cells have been shown to differentiate into multiple cell types present in the heart, including cardiac muscle cells, indicating that the heart is not terminally differentiated. These new findings have stimulated optimism that the progression of heart failure can be prevented or even reversed with cell-based therapy.

Tulane Stem Cell Scientist Coming to Texas

From the Temple, Texas news, we hear that the "brain drain" is gaining Texas another adult stem cell pioneer.

Read about Dr. Darwin Prockop's move to Texas and his research in adult stem cells, here.

He will serve as inaugural holder of the Stearman Chair in Genomic Medicine, professor of molecular and cellular medicine in the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Scott & White.

Everyone has stem cells, which are “generic” cells that can make exact copies of themselves indefinitely. In addition, a stem cell has the ability to produce specialized cells for various tissues in the body - such as heart muscle, brain tissue.

“There are still some mysteries about stem cells, but many people are now using the cells to treat almost any disease you can name - arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, stokes, kidney diseases,” Prockop said.

Why stems cells do what they do is a puzzle, he said.

“Our ideas have changed,” Prockop said. “It seems as though we are tapping into cells that are there to repair any tissue in the body.”

Time flies

Someone pointed out to me that it has been a while since I've posted anything. It turns out that I'm not as good and multi-multi-tasking as I used to be. Nowadays, it seems that I can only handle 3 or 4 really big things at time.

Work, family and politics are eating up my days and nights, so I'm not keeping up with my blogging.

There's still occasional comments on old posts on the movie, "Expelled," (here) , on how Plan B works (here), and even one from August, 2006 on stem cells from breast milk (here).

That anonymous is very busy.