Scientific First: Human Skin Cells Transformed Into ‘Young,’ Beating Heart Cells
- Posted on May 23, 2012 at 2:53pm by
Liz Klimas
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Close up of cardiac muscle. Cells such as these were created from reprogrammed skin cells. (Image: Dr. S. Girod, Anton Becker via Wikimedia)
In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists have taken skin cells from elderly patients with damaged hearts and made them into heart cells as new and young as those that would have been present when the patient was born.
(Related: ‘Human body parts store’: Lab growing synthetic parts for transplant)
The Guardian reports the team at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology took skin cells from a 61 and 51-year-0ld patient — both of whom had suffered heart attacks — and “infected” the cells with a virus that had genes for pluripotency, or a state of cells that are undifferentiated. From there the cells were developed into heart cells. The other genes and virus that were inserted into what had once been skin cells were removed.
These new cells were tested by putting them into rat hearts. Researchers found they beat in time with the rat’s own cells, showing that an improvement in heart function could occur with these new cells. Researchers told the Guardian if they beat irregularly with the other heart cells, no improvement would be seen and an arrhythmia could result.
(Related: FDA using ‘interstate commerce’ to regulate your stem cells as a drug)
Watch the heart cells beat in a video here.
The Guardian has more from the researchers on the value of this study:
“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 his heart cells were in when he was just born,” said Lior Gepstein, a cardiologist at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
[...]
“More people are surviving following a heart attack than ever before and therefore the number of people living with a damaged heart and heart failure is increasing,” said Nicholas Mills, a consultant cardiologist at Edinburgh University. “Unfortunately, the body has only very limited capacity to repair the heart following a heart attack. There is therefore an urgent need to develop effective and safe treatments to regenerate the heart.”
“This technology needs to be refined before it can be used for the treatment of patients with heart failure, but these findings are encouraging and take us a step closer to our goal of identifying an effective means of repairing the heart and limiting the consequences of heart failure,” he added.
Fox News explains that since these “human-induced pluripotent stem cells” are taken from the patient’s own body, there is less of a risk for rejection.
Although encouraged by what they have found, it could still be upwards of a decade before this treatment would be available to the public. Among the tests for safety and efficacy, the Guardian reports other concerns include reprogramming cells resulting in tumors. It also states that developments would need to be made to mass produce cells in this manner since since about 1 billion cells are damaged in a heart attack. Gepstein told Fox that the human heart has about 4 billion cells in total.
This research was published in the European Heart Journal.
(H/T io9)
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ronin_6
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 1:42amSo now about the only things we can’t replace are the brain the spine. What is going to happen when all the seasoned citzens start getting hearts and lungs and livers replaced and start living way past the norm? Pensions, retirement funds, social security, none of them are designed for immortals. I know that sounds a little out there but they all count on folks dying sometime in their mid 80′s. What if everyone starts living to 120 or 130 or beyond?
Report Post »Melika
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 3:29pmSo should we just kill them all? Or maybe have a means test to see if their life has enough value to warrant the treatment. Or just have a cut-off age: if you make it to 80, you need to die before you get to 81.
Report Post »When your heart starts to fail you, I suggest you re-visit the question you posed and ask if it is relevant to the situation. There are many people with heart conditions in their 40′s, 50′s, and younger. This simple technique could save millions, if not billions, in treatments, drugs, and other modalities while greatly improving a person’s life.
JJBlazeReader
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 8:58pm..
Further evidence that adult stem research has been proven viable and is already being used and is showing more promise than killing a baby for embryonic stem cell research.
If anyone is truly interested in alleviating human suffering through stem cell research, adult stem research is one of the ways.
..
Report Post »NickyLouse
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 7:49amGod is mocking those who consider themselves wise. We do not need to destroy life to discover the power of life and that is what is done in embryonic stem cell research and development.
Report Post »JJBlazeReader
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 9:27am..
There is no need for embryonic stem cell research. Right now tests are under way using umbilical cord stem cells to cure hearing loss.
Report Post »..
Wilma
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 9:42amI was thinking the same thing.
Report Post »hi
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 12:47pmAmen.
Report Post »Free2speakRN
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 2:27pmThe reasoning to use embryonic stem cells is heartless.
Report Post »grimmjsb
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 8:22pmAnd if Palestine had it’s way this tech may not have existed.
Report Post »johnpaulkuchtajr
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 9:25pmYeah, I was just trying to remember the name of the huge bio-tech firm run by the Palestinians, or maybe it was Hamas, no, wasn’t it al Qaeda? No, I was was suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome again.
The fact is that there isn’t diddly squat coming out of any of the Muslim sectors mentioned, except HATE, of course. Naturally, all her enemies are envious of Israel since the Muslims don’t rise to the level of baboons.
Report Post »Chris2
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 4:32pm*Dad died of heart disease*
*Both Grand-dads died of heart disease*
*Oldest brother has heart disease*
I’M THROWING MONEY AT MY SCREEN! WHY IS NOTHING HAPPENING?
Report Post »Guerrino_P
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 7:42pmIt’s the work of the devil. It‘s God’s plan the we all die without man made intervention. The next thing you know Barry is going to throw more of our money at this lib crap. My vote is going to Mitt.
Report Post »TangLaoYa
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 4:13pmThis is a case where the rich serve us simple folk by pioneering a technolocy. They pay the initial costs before the technology is scaled up and they take the risks as it is perfected. If the technology had to stay on the shelf until it could be provided for everyone equally through the National Health, it would stay on the shelf forever.
Let Warren Buffet be our guinnea pig.
Report Post »JRook
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 5:17pmOn December 19, 2011, a bid by a consortium of Cornell University and Technion won a competition for rights to claim free city land in New York City, as well as $100 million in subsidies to build an engineering campus in the city. They receive a lot of government money also. And no doubt benefit from researched performed that is funded through government grants and awards. NASA, the military and a number of other federal agencies have funded billions of $ of research that private companies have brought forward to the market. Such a partnership has always produced the optimum level of funding and certainly more than investors would have provided.
Report Post »TangLaoYa
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 8:19pmI suppose you are trying to say that government funding gives the biggest payoff. Try to follow this if you can. When government leads they hire “an expert” and put everything in his hands. If it works it works. If it doesn’t work they double his budget. Government funding does one thing for sure– it follows plan A no matter how absurd it becomes and it stifles competing ideas. Then, after vast waste it holds up some spin-off result and says “Where would we be without this?”
Report Post »Government has a role in emergencies like war. NASA is excusable on those grounds because it was part of the arms race. The interstate highways are excusable because they were a strategic necessity but they killed off the railroads and gave us our dependance on oil. How have they solved that? Ethanol. How’s that working?
flat_top_particular_about_the_point_it_makes
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:53pmI would like to transplant about 4 pounds of those cells into my penis.
Dismayed Veteran
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 4:05pmLol!!!!!!!
Report Post »Constructionist
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:47pmNow if they could only figure out how to grow a gainfully employed worker from liberal DNA.
Report Post »1TrueOne55
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 8:42pmFirst they have to figure out how the economy creates jobs, remember no member of this administration ever worked a real job for a retail company at any time in their lives. They spent most of their adult time in Academia, dealing in theories of economics, not the reality of economics.
Report Post »Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:25pmOnly the elites will get these treatments under obamacare. Obamacare is a scheme to get your retirement and you’re inheritance before you can spend it. Not to mention they have an imperative to eliminate the informed and unindoctrinated vote if they are ever to stay in power past the public ability to find out what they are up to from generation to generation.
Report Post »jujubeebee
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:23pmOh, yeah right!…………like the future of healthcare is going to be able to do anything like this……..when costs are the primary motivator in how the government runs our healthcare. Research to better health is going to never be materialized. Face facts here.
Report Post »Popester7
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:00pmtreatments that infect people with viruses? Isnt this how zombie apocalypses start? ;) ;) ;)
Report Post »US-First
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:45pmHopefully you are just trying to be funny. Otherwise please inform yourself about how the virus in this case ceased to exist once the genetic material was delivered and it was done in cells outside the body not injected into the person. If it were injected into the body your immune system would quickly destroy these types of virus. In the petri dish there is no immune system. However, these cells assuming they are injected back into the original doner would not be immuno-targeted but they would also not contain a live intact virus.
Report Post »mjrossi
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 3:50pmIt is not a big deal using these viruses. They have been engineered so they can not replicate. They only work once. Just think of them as really little syringes.
Report Post »Popester7
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 4:51pmLOL! oh my gosh, US-First! Do you see the winkie faces at the end of my post? see them? there are threee of them. What to you think that three winkie faces mean? Please inform yourself on the use of emoticons to convey jokes, sarcasm, and ZERO SERIOUSNESS! Love ya buddy, but you gotta lighten up!
Report Post »GenOptimus
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 2:16amZOMBIES!!! I’ve got my 12ga. shotgun ready, water ,sandbags, two by fours and I’m trying to build some muscle, get faster, and lose some weight. I don‘t know about the rest of y’all but I plan on hiding in the white house because every self-respecting zombie knows that there’s nobody with a brain living there.
Report Post »