A research team led by a professor at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) said it had succeeded in developing a new therapy for heart repair using stem cells.
Patrick Hsieh (謝清河), an assistant professor at NCKU’s Institute of Nanotechnology and Microsystem Engineering in the College of Medicine, along with his team, successfully combined self-assembling peptide nanofiber hydrogel with stem cells from autologous bone marrow to treat an acute heart attack, or myocardial infarction, according to a press release.
Their experiment on Lanyu miniature pigs, which have a similar cardiac structure to that of humans, proved successful, making it possible that the new stem cell therapy for treating heart disease — the first of its kind — can help boost the regeneration of myocardial muscle.
The discovery of the novel stem cell therapy was published last month in Circulation, the top international journal in the cardiovascular field, and both foreign and domestic patent applications are being applied for.
In Taiwan, there are approximately 2 million heart disease -patients and 400,000 people suffer heart attacks each year.
Hsieh said that even if patients were lucky enough to survive a heart attack, their myocardial cells lack the ability to regenerate. The cells cannot take intraventricular pressure and thus they will gradually expand and become thin, leading to heart failure.
“Even though recent research studies have indicated that many types of stem cells can be used to improve heart function and be clinically effective and secure, there is still room for improvement,” he said.
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