When you suffer a heart attack, beating heart muscle cells become deprived of oxygen and die—and become encased in scar tissue. Once these cells die, they can’t be brought back to life. But new research presented this week has found that injecting a protein into the heart immediately following an attack can spur stem cells … Continue reading Protein Drip Spurs Stem Cells to Save Heart Tissue
Heart Disease/Stroke
Protein Drip Spurs Stem Cells to Save Heart Tissue
When you suffer a heart attack, beating heart muscle cells become deprived of oxygen and die—and become encased in scar tissue. Once these cells die, they can’t be brought back to life. But new research presented this week has found that injecting a protein into the heart immediately following an attack can spur stem cells … Continue reading Protein Drip Spurs Stem Cells to Save Heart Tissue
Slowing Down the Clock on Aging Hearts
It’s like something from a nightmare: a disease that ages you at a breakneck pace, so that by age 12, your body more closely resembles someone in their 80’s—inside and out. Instead of enjoying your childhood and adolescence, you suffer from diseases usually reserved for octogenarians: including heart disease, kidney failure and stroke. Chances are, … Continue reading Slowing Down the Clock on Aging Hearts
Stem cell stories that caught our eye: stroke, growing bladder tissue and a clinical trial roundup
Here are some stem cell stories that caught our eye this past week. Some are groundbreaking science, others are of personal interest to us, and still others are just fun. Early data on stem cells for stroke promising. The British company ReNeuron reported preliminary data on its clinical trial in stroke patients at the European … Continue reading Stem cell stories that caught our eye: stroke, growing bladder tissue and a clinical trial roundup
Modeling Heart Disease: This Time on a Chip
Scientists at Harvard University have developed a new way to model congenital heart disease. Though researchers have previously generated heart cells derived from patients in a petri dish, this time scientists did so with groundbreaking ‘organ-on-a-chip’ technology—proving that this new type of technology can replicate a genetic disorder in the lab. The research, which was … Continue reading Modeling Heart Disease: This Time on a Chip
The Secret to Mending a Broken Heart
When someone suffers a heart attack, part of the heart’s muscle cells are deprived of oxygen and die. They become encased in scar tissue. And they don’t come back. A top priority among researchers, therefore, has been finding a way to grownew heart muscle. But the heart is a complex organ, and even as research … Continue reading The Secret to Mending a Broken Heart
Hope for treating heart disease with stem cells?
It's a big day for announcing prizes to CIRM grantee, and a good week for stem cells in heart disease. CIRM scholar Li Qian from The Gladstone Institutes won the Louis N. and Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Prize for Young Investigators from the American Heart Association (AHA). Hers was one of several announcements … Continue reading Hope for treating heart disease with stem cells?
Purified heart cells from human embryonic stem cells
Earlier this week, a team from South San Fransisco-based VistaGen and Toronto's McEwen Centre published a paper in the October 23, 2011 Nature Biotechnology that could have important consequences for efforts to repair heart attack damage with stem cells. VistaGen has a CIRM Tools & Technologies award, though that award did not fund the work … Continue reading Purified heart cells from human embryonic stem cells
Heart, heal theyself
A group of researchers from University College London made a splash this week with their work prodding heart muscle to repair itself. This is big news, given both the number of people who have heart attacks (more than 1 million per year in the US) and the number of stem cell scientists working to regenerate … Continue reading Heart, heal theyself
Genes at the heart of heart deformities found through stem cell studies
CIRM grantees at The Gladstone Institutes have, over the past few years, been hard at work learning about the origins of heart deformities by studying how stem cells mature into heart tissue.What they've learned is that small relatives of DNA, called micro-RNAs, help control when and how cells mature into heart tissue (blogged about here … Continue reading Genes at the heart of heart deformities found through stem cell studies
The Stem Cellar 