NHLBI IN THE PRESS

Human stem cells improve recovery from heart attack in primates

Unlike many other organs in the body, the human heart has very little capacity to repair itself after injury. As a result, heart attacks often lead to heart failure--a condition in which the heart can't pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. Drug treatments for heart failure manage symptoms but do not address the root problem of muscle deficiency. Researchers recently showed that transplantation of approximately 750 million cryopreserved heart muscle cells derived from human embryonic stem cells reduces scar size and leads to a robust and durable improvement in cardiac function after large heart attacks in macaque monkeys. According to the authors, this is the first demonstration that human heart muscle cells can restore cardiac function in a physiologically relevant large animal model. The therapeutic effect may be further augmented when these cells are transplanted into diseased human hearts. The study, which was partly funded by the NHLBI, was published in Nature Biotechnology.