Year 1

Heart disease is a major cause of death and disability in the US, accounting for 1 in every 4 deaths and costing more than 100 billion annually. While significant improvements have been made towards treating and managing heart disease, we are still not able to effectively return the heart to a healthy state and cure the patients. With our project we have set out to develop a novel strategy for not only halting the disease progression but to reverse the devastating effect on the function of the heart. By combining bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells with a biological scaffold material, we hope to create a patch for the heart that will support and regenerate the diseased tissue to the point where the patient will be relieved of the burden of their disease and have a markedly improve quality of life. We have in the past year made significant advances toward establishing an animal disease model in which we can study novel ways of treating heart disease. We have in the same time isolated and characterized cells that reside in the bone marrow and that have the potential to heal the diseased tissue by improving blood flow, minimize scarring and generally promoting recovery of the heart function. We have studies these cells under when grown under different conditions and found their ability to mediate tissue regeneration to be highly dependent on their local environments. We are currently trying to identify the optimal combination of cells and microenvironment that may achieve maximal regenerative effect in our disease model and ultimately help our patient combat their heart disease.