Very big deal: UW team uses stem cells to fix monkey hearts

Originally published April 30, 2014 at 10:01 AM | Page modified April 30, 2014 at 8:32 PM

For nearly two decades, Dr. Chuck Murry, a University of Washington cardiovascular biology researcher, has been intent on transforming powerful human stem cells into heart-muscle cells that can repair damaged hearts.

He and his colleagues have worked through myriad setbacks and complications in studies on mice, rats and guinea pigs, piling up successes as their animal models got larger and physiologically closer to humans.

Now, in a bold step toward ultimately being able to stem the tide of heart failure in humans with damaged hearts, they have successfully regenerated heart muscle in monkeys, Murry, Dr. Michael Laflamme and his UW colleagues reported in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

As before, researchers at the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine transformed human stem cells into heart-muscle cells this time injecting them into the damaged hearts of monkeys. There, the cells assembled themselves into muscle fibers, began beating in the hearts rhythm, and ultimately were nurtured by the monkeys arteries and veins, which grew into the new heart tissue.

On average, the transplanted cells regenerated 40 percent of the damaged areas.

This is 10 times more heart muscle than anybody else in the world has been able to generate, said Murry, who predicted his lab would be ready for clinical trials in humans within four years.

The Murry teams latest success, like the others, had its own complications, but even so, cardiovascular-research leaders not connected with the work hailed it as a significant advance.

Dr. Michael Simons, director of the Yale Cardiovascular Research Center, said the research is the first to show that human embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into normal heart tissue. The labs impressive ability to scale up production of sufficient newly programmed stem cells for a large-animal heart closer to the size of a human heart, which was done by Laflammes team, was likely unprecedented, as well.

Its a very big deal, said Dr. Richard Lee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston.

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Very big deal: UW team uses stem cells to fix monkey hearts