Researchers with UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass., are participating in a nationwide clinical trial to assess whether adult cardiac stem cells can reduce residual heart attack scars by creating living tissue. .
Organs like the liver have active stem cells that facilitate regeneration, but the heart's stem cells don't work the same way. Researchers theorize that if extractions of cardiac stem cells can be "awoken" in a laboratory setting and then infused into the coronary artery that was blocked, the damage might be reversible.
"We give all kinds of medicines after a heart attack to help prevent the heart from declining over time, but there is nothing we can give that will bring back dead tissue," Jefferey J. Rade, MD, cardiologist and researcher with UMass, said in an interview with Telegram.
While it is unknown whether an infusive stem cell procedure would have a restorative effect on cardiac tissue, some have hope.
At UMass Memorial, about 500 patients are seen in the Advanced Heart Failure Program. The majority of these patients have had heart attacks that created residual scarring. If stem cell therapy proves effective, it would bode well for the prevention of advanced heart failure and that 500 number would be significantly deflated.
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