14 DAY TRIAL // When surgeons perform heart bypass surgery on patients, they generally tend to remove certain sections of several veins, in order to conduct the procedure. Usually, these leftovers are disposed off without another glance, but a new investigation suggests that they too could contribute to saving lives. According to researchers in the United Kingdom, vital stem cells can be successfully extracted from these leftover vein segments, and then successfully used in patients to promote the growth of new blood vessels.
During the study, which was funded by the British Heart Foundation, a team of experts from the University of Bristol (UB) Bristol Heart Institute (BHI) managed to produce such stem cells for the first time. They say that one of the first medical applications that spring to mind for the cells is using them to repair damaged heart muscle after a heart attack. The investigation was led by UB professor of experimental cardiovascluar medicine Paolo Madeddu. Details of the work appear in the latest issue of the highly-regarded scientific journal Circulation.
The achievement is seen in a new light when considering that more than 20,000 people undergo heart bypass surgery yearly. This means that the supply of veins, and vital stem cells implicitly, is relatively larger, and therefore suitable for fairly-large-scale applications. In the experiments the group conducted on unsuspecting lab mice, it was revealed that stem cells harvested through the new method had the ability to significantly promote the growth of new blood vessels inside injured leg muscles. At this point, the group is focused on determining whether the approach could be used to reverse the effects of a heart attack in humans.
“This is the first time that anyone has been able to extract stem cells from sections of vein left over from heart bypass operations. These cells might make it possible for a person having a bypass to also receive a heart treatment using their body's own stem cells. We can also multiply these cells in the lab to make millions more stem cells, which could potentially be stored in a bank and used to treat thousands of patients,” says professor Madeddu.
“Repairing a damaged heart is the holy grail for heart patients. The discovery that cells taken from patients' own blood vessels may be able to stimulate new blood vessels to grow in damaged tissues is a very encouraging and important advance. It brings the possibility of 'cell therapy' for damaged hearts one step closer and, importantly, if the chemical messages produced by the cells can be identified, it is possible that drugs could be developed to achieve the same end,” concludes the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, professor Peter Weissberg.