In landmark study of cell therapy for heart attack, more cells make a difference

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

21-Nov-2014

Contact: Quinn Eastman qeastma@emory.edu 404-727-7829 Emory Health Sciences @emoryhealthsci

Patients who receive more cells get significant benefits. That's a key lesson emerging from a clinical trial that was reported this week at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago.

In this study, doctors treated heart attack patients with their own bone marrow cells, selected for their healing potential and then reinjected into the heart, in an effort to improve the heart's recovery.

In the PreSERVE-AMI phase II trial, physicians from 60 sites treated 161 patients, making the study one of the largest to assess cell therapy for heart attacks in the United States. The study was sponsored by NeoStem, Inc.

"This was an enormous undertaking, one that broke new ground in terms of assessing cell therapy rigorously," says the study's principal investigator, Arshed Quyyumi, MD, professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and co-director of the Emory Clinical Cardiovascular Research Institute.

"We made some real progress in determining the cell type and doses that can benefit patients, in a group for whom the risks of progression to heart failure are high."

All participating patients received the standard of care -- stent placement -- and were only enrolled if, four days after heart attack and stenting, their ejection fraction (a measure of the heart's pumping capacity) was less than 48 percent. The average starting ejection fraction was 34 percent, a sign of severe injury to the heart.

After enrollment, patients had cells extracted from their bone marrow and received an intracoronary injection of sorted bone marrow cells or a placebo. Not all patients received the same dose of cells. Patients were supposed to receive a minimum of 10 million cells but some received more, up to 40 million.

Read the original:
In landmark study of cell therapy for heart attack, more cells make a difference