- Mar 16, 2012
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Zionists working hard to help people suffering from heart disease or heart attacks:
Scientists Turn Human Skin Cells Into Healthy Heart Cells
In a medical first, scientists in Haifa, Israel, took skin cells from two heart failure patients and reprogrammed them into stem cells that generated healthy, beating heart muscle cells in the lab. Though human testing is likely a decade off, the hope is that such cells can be used to help people with heart failure repair their damaged hearts with their own skin cells.
In the current study, scientists first mixed the newly developed heart cells with pre-existing heart tissue — within days, the cells were beating together. The heart tissue was then transplanted into rats, where it integrated with the rats’ healthy heart cells.
“What is new and exciting about our research is that we have shown that it’s possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born,” says lead researcher Dr. Lior Gepstein, a senior clinical electrophysiologist at Rambam Medical Center in Israel, said in a statement.
The researchers were pleased to find that the cells made from the two heart failure patients, ages 51 and 61, generated heart muscle cells that were just as effective as those developed from healthy, young controls.
If the technology works in human hearts, it could potentially prevent problems of immune rejection, since the cells would be the patient’s own. It would also avoid the moral issues surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells, since such reprogrammed stem cells — or human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — do not use embryos.
Scientists Turn Human Skin Cells Into Healthy Heart Cells
In a medical first, scientists in Haifa, Israel, took skin cells from two heart failure patients and reprogrammed them into stem cells that generated healthy, beating heart muscle cells in the lab. Though human testing is likely a decade off, the hope is that such cells can be used to help people with heart failure repair their damaged hearts with their own skin cells.
In the current study, scientists first mixed the newly developed heart cells with pre-existing heart tissue — within days, the cells were beating together. The heart tissue was then transplanted into rats, where it integrated with the rats’ healthy heart cells.
“What is new and exciting about our research is that we have shown that it’s possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young — the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born,” says lead researcher Dr. Lior Gepstein, a senior clinical electrophysiologist at Rambam Medical Center in Israel, said in a statement.
The researchers were pleased to find that the cells made from the two heart failure patients, ages 51 and 61, generated heart muscle cells that were just as effective as those developed from healthy, young controls.
If the technology works in human hearts, it could potentially prevent problems of immune rejection, since the cells would be the patient’s own. It would also avoid the moral issues surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells, since such reprogrammed stem cells — or human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — do not use embryos.
