ISRAEL: Israeli team succeeds in transforming skin cells into beating heart tissue that could help patients with heart failure

Record ID: 397407

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israeli team succeeds in transforming skin cells into beating heart tissue that could help patients with heart failure
  • Date: 24th May 2012
  • Summary: HAIFA, ISRAEL (MAY 23, 2012) (REUTERS) SCIENTIST LOOKING AT COMPUTER SCREEN SHOWING BEATING HEART CELL DERIVED FROM SKIN CELLS OF A PATIENT WITH HEART FAILURE MORE OF HEART CELL BEATING SCIENTIST LOOKING THROUGH MICROSCOPE VARIOUS OF BEATING HEART CELL PROFESSOR LIOR GEPSTEIN, HEAD OF RESEARCH TEAM FROM THE FACULTY OF MEDICINE AT THE TECHNION-ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHN
  • Embargoed: 8th June 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Health,Science / Technology
  • Reuters ID: LVAAHV28T96S92PO3ZQKMNGKUEID
  • Story Text: Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition.
    The researchers, based in Haifa, Israel, said there were still many years of testing and refining ahead. But the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts.
    "We were able to demonstrate the ability to take skin cells from very sick patients with significant heart failure, heart disease, and show that cells, skin cells from these patients can be eventually differentiated to become healthy heart cells in the dish. So one can take skin cells from a very sick individual, who has very sick heart cells, to reprogram them to become induced pluripotent stem cells and then make heart cells that are healthy, that are young and resemble heart cells at the day that the patient was born," said Lior Gepstein from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, who led the work.
    The researchers, whose study was published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, said clinical trials of the technique could begin within 10 years.
    "These cells can be transplanted into hearts of animals, survive and function in synchrony with existing heart tissue. This study open the road, hopefully, to future clinical trials, in a decade or so, that will test the ability of such heart cells to repair the patient's own heart," Gepstein said.
    Heart failure is a debilitating condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood around the body. It has become more prevalent in recent decades as advances medical science mean many more people survive heart attacks.
    At the moment, people with severe heart failure have to rely on mechanical devices or hope for a transplant.
    Researchers have been studying stem cells from various sources for more than a decade, hoping to capitalise on their ability to transform into a wide variety of other kinds of cell to treat a range of health conditions.
    There are two main forms of stem cells - embryonic stem cells, which are harvested from embryos, and reprogrammed "human induced pluripotent stem cells" (hiPSCs), often originally from skin or blood.
    Gepstein's team took skin cells from two men with heart failure - aged 51 and 61 - and transformed them by adding three genes and then a small molecule called valproic acid to the cell nucleus.
    They found that the resulting hiPSCs were able to differentiate to become heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, just as effectively as hiPSCs that had been developed from healthy, young volunteers who acted as controls for the study.
    The team was then able to make the cardiomyocytes develop into heart muscle tissue, which they grew in a laboratory dish together with existing cardiac tissue.
    Within 24 to 48 hours the two types of tissue were beating together, they said.
    In a final step of the study, the new tissue was transplanted into healthy rat hearts and the researchers found it began to establish connections with cells in the host tissue.
    Gepstein said he hoped that the hiPSCs derived cardiomyocytes will not be rejected following transplantation into the same patients from which they were derived.
    Experts in stem cell and cardiac medicine who were not involved in Gepstein's work praised it but also said there was a lot to do before it had a chance of becoming an effective treatment.
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