Through a clinical trial to grow and surgically replace stem cells, U researchers hope to reduce a patient’s heart failure and increase the overall lifespan by a few years.
Amit Patel, a surgery professor at the U School of Medicine, is organizing the five-center clinical trial that will take patients with certain forms of heart failure and treat them with their own stem cells to improve heart conditions.
“The two things we hope the stem cells may be doing is helping the weakened heart muscle become stronger and growing new heart muscles,” said Patel, who is principal investigator of the national study.
Patel and other researchers will remove three tablespoons of bone marrow cells from a patient with a weakened heart and take the cells to another laboratory for about two weeks to grow. The grown cells will help improve the overall condition of heart muscles, whereas stem cells in a sick patient are unlikely to grow.
Patel said by using a patient’s own cells, the body is less likely to reject them.
“If they’re not your own cells, you have two choices. Use cells that are close to your own, or trick the immune system into accepting (the cells),” Patel said.
Researchers then take the altered cells and surgically inject them into the left ventricle of the heart.
Patel said he developed a surgical technique that is less invasive than normal surgeries by making three small incisions in the left side of the chest.
“I want to do the least invasive procedure,” Patel said. “It hasn’t been done in the U.S. before.”
David Bull, a surgical professor and primary investigator for the U’s clinical trial site, said in a statement that more than 5 million patients in the United States have some form of heart failure.
“A subset of these patients has (a form of heart disease) that leaves the heart weakened, enlarged and unable to pump blood efficiently,” Bull said. “For most of these patients, the only option has been a heart transplant.”
The average person’s heart beats about 60 to 100 times per minute compared to a weakened heart that beats about 30 times, Patel said.
He said he hopes to improve a patient’s heart rate by at least 20 percent.
“It’s the difference between someone who is short of breath while sitting, or someone short of breath after walking up two flights of stairs,” Patel said.
The U’s clinical trial will accept about 40 patients with heart failure, and if successful, researchers will expand the trial to more than 100 patients.
Patel said they hope the treatment will help increase how long a patient lives, along with improving their heart condition.
“The natural progression of (heart failure) is that half of these patients will be dead in the next five years with just normal treatment,” he said.
Amit Patel