Repairing Heart Damage caused by severe Coronary Artery Disease with Adult Stem Cells (2/5/2007)

Dr. Gary Schaer, director of the Rush Cardiac Catheterization Lab and study investigator, is currently conducting Phase II clinical trials of a new stem cell technique to restore heart performance in patients with chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI), a severe form of coronary artery disease.

Myocardial ischemia is a serious heart condition which causes a narrowing of coronary arteries and results in a reduced blood flow to the heart. This often causes chronic chest pains, and can even lead to death. The disease affects hundreds of thousands of new people each year.

The technique involves injecting specialized stem cells onto the heart and arteries. The stem cells can be injected using a special type of catheter that can be inserted in the aorta. The stem cells then help regenerate the damaged tissue, restoring heart performance.

Unlike previous studies that harvested stem cells from bone marrow, this new technique harvests the adult stem cells, specifically known as CD34+ stem cells (endothelial progenitor cells), from the patients blood. This new procedure, only requires one surgery to inject the stem cells onto the heart, where the previous bone marrow method required an additional surgical procedure to extract the bone marrow from the patients' hips. This is also the first such therapy to make it to Phase II trials in the United States.

The study is sponsored by Baxter Healthcare Corporation's Cellular Therapies business unit which developed the technology that is used to select the subject's own CD34+ stem cells from their blood. The study is being conducted at 20 different research sites nationwide.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the Rush University Medical Center

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