Last year we witnessed how the heart of a mammal, specifically that of a mouse, was able to beat again after being rebuilt with stem cells. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Washington (USA) has managed to restore damaged heart muscles in monkeys using this same technique with human embryonic stem cells .
For the experiment , the researchers induced controlled myocardial infarctions in pig-tailed macaques. After creating these experimental heart attacks, the heart muscle is damaged and does not grow back, so the heart is less able to pump blood, a circumstance that usually leads to heart failure. The purpose of this experiment was to use stem cells to replace damaged muscle tissue with new cells from the heart, with the goal of making the heart function normally.
Thus, the experts injected one billion cardiac muscle cells derived from human embryonic stem cells into the infarcted heart muscle. After several weeks, the cells infiltrated damaged tissue, matured and assembled into muscle fibers, causing full integration into the macaque heart muscle in just three months .
“Before this study, it was not known whether it is possible to produce a sufficient number of these cells and use them successfully to regenerate the muscles of damaged hearts in a large animal whose size and physiology of the heart are similar to those of the human heart, ” he says. Charles Murry, study leader.
Thanks to this experiment, published in the journal Nature , the scientists suggest that in about four years this same approach may be viable in humans .
