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posted by mrpg on Monday January 15 2018, @06:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-heart-U dept.

"Decorated" Stem Cells Could Offer Targeted Heart Repair

Although cardiac stem cell therapy is a promising treatment for heart attack patients, directing the cells to the site of an injury – and getting them to stay there – remains challenging. In a new pilot study using an animal model, North Carolina State University researcher Ke Cheng and his team show that "decorating" cardiac stem cells with platelet nanovesicles can increase the stem cells' ability to find and remain at the site of heart attack injury and enhance their effectiveness in treatment.

"Platelets can home in on an injury site and stay there, and even in some cases recruit a body's own naturally occurring stem cells to the site, but they are a double-edged sword," says Cheng, associate professor of veterinary medicine and associate professor in the NC State/UNC Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. "That's because once the platelets arrive at the site of injury, they trigger the coagulation processes that cause clotting. In a heart-attack injury, blood clots are the last thing that you want."

Cheng and his associates wondered if it would be possible to co-opt a platelet's ability to locate and stick to an injury site without inducing clotting. They found that adhesion molecules (a group of glycoproteins) located on the platelet's surface were responsible for its ability to find and bind to an injury. So the team created platelet nanovesicles from these molecules, and then decorated the surface of cardiac stem cells with the nanovesicles.

[...] In a proof-of-concept study involving a rat model of myocardial infarction, twice as many platelet nanovesicle decorated cardiac stem cells, or PNV-CSCs, were retained in the heart than non-decorated cardiac stem cells. The rodents were monitored for four weeks. Overall, the rats in the PNV-CSC group showed nearly 20 percent or higher cardiac function than the control CSC group. A small pilot study in a pig model also demonstrated higher rates of stem cell retention with PNV-CSCs, though the team did not perform functional studies. A future follow-up study is planned.

Targeted repair of heart injury by stem cells fused with platelet nanovesicles (DOI: 10.1038/s41551-017-0182-x) (DX)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:36AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @06:36AM (#622468)

    On my heart my left (what the bottom one ventrical?) will stop beating out of turn and making me almost pass out? that would be nice

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 15 2018, @10:30PM (#622808)

    No, cardiomyocytes do not control their beating independently.