Disease Focus: Heart Disease
Allogeneic Cardiac-Derived Stem Cells for Patients Following a Myocardial Infarction
The proposed research will demonstrate both safety and efficacy of a heart-derived stem cell product in patients who have experienced a heart attack either recently or in the past by conducting a mid-stage clinical trial. A prior early-stage trial showed that the product can repair damaged portions of the heart after a heart attack in […]
Direct Cardiac Reprogramming for Heart Regeneration
Heart disease is a leading cause of mortality. The underlying pathology is typically loss of heart muscle cells that leads to heart failure. Because heart muscle has little or no regenerative capacity after birth, current therapeutic approaches are limited for the over 5 million Americans who suffer from heart failure. Our recent findings regarding direct […]
Human ES cell based therapy of heart failure without allogenic immune rejection
Heart failure is a major and ever-growing health problem affecting an estimated 5.8 million Americans with about half a million new cases every year. There are limited therapeutic options for heart failure. Heart transplantation is effective but has limited impact due to scarcity of donor organs and eventual immune rejection even under chronic immune suppression. […]
Heart Repair with Human Tissue Engineered Myocardium
Heart disease is the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in the US. With an estimated 1.5 million new or recurrent myocardial infarctions, the total economic burden on our health care system is enormous. Although conventional pharmacotherapy and surgical interventions often improve cardiac function and quality of life, many patients continue to develop refractory […]
Identification of Novel Therapeutics for Danon Disease Using an iPS Model of the Disease
Autophagy is the cells mechanism for breaking down and recycling proteins. Danon disease is an inherited disorder of autophagy. Patients with this disease have major abnormalities in heart and skeletal muscle and generally die by the time they are in their 20s. Recently we used a new technology to turn skin cells from two patients […]
Extracellular Matrix Bioscaffold Augmented with Human Stem Cells for Cardiovascular Repair
An estimated 16.3 million Americans suffer from coronary heart disease. Every 25 seconds, someone has a coronary event and every minute, someone dies from one. Treatment for coronary heart disease has improved greatly in recent years, yet 1 in 6 deaths in the US in 2007 was still caused by this terrible disease. Stem cells […]
Phase I study of IM Injection of VEGF Producing MSC for the Treatment of Critical Limb Ischemia
Critical limb ischemia (CLI) represents a significant unmet medical need without any approved medical therapies for patients who fail surgical or angioplasty procedures to restore blood flow to the lower leg. CLI affects 2 million people in the U.S. and is associated with an increased risk of leg amputation and death. Amputation rates in patients […]
Preclinical Development and First-In-Human Testing of GRNCM1 in Advanced Heart Failure
This application seeks to bring to the clinic a new treatment for myocardial disease based on human embryonic stem cell (hESC) derived cardiomyocytes. hESC-cardiomyocytes have the unique potential to address the underlying cause of heart disease by repopulating areas of damaged myocardium (heart tissue) with viable cardiac cells. This therapeutic approach represents a potential breakthrough […]
Human Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes for Patients with End Stage Heart Failure
Patients with end-stage heart failure (ESHF) have a 2-year survival rate of 50% with conventional medical therapy. This dismal survival rate is actually significantly worse than patients with AIDS, liver cirrhosis, stroke, and other debilitating diseases. Stem cell therapy may be a promising strategy for inducing myocardial regeneration via paracrine activation, prevention of cardiac apoptosis, […]
Mechanisms of Direct Cardiac Reprogramming
Heart disease is a leading cause of adult and childhood mortality. The underlying pathology is typically loss of heart muscle cells that leads to heart failure, or improper development of specialized cardiac muscle cells called cardiomyocytes during embryonic development that leads to congenital heart malformations. Because cardiomyocytes have little or no regenerative capacity after birth, […]