Can Heart Attack Damage Be Reversed?

July 14, 2014

(CNN) – Marban led one of the earlier stem cell trials, using cells taken by biopsy from the patient’s own heart. The cells were multiplied in a laboratory for two to three weeks and then reinfused through a catheter. At the time, says Marban, it was thought that the stem cells themselves turned into new heart muscle and blood vessels. “In fact, the more we learned, the more we realized that that’s not what these cells do,” he says. “They can make heart muscles and blood vessels in a dish very nicely. But in the living organism what they seem to do is secrete factors that wake up the surrounding heart muscle.”