Study Urges Caution in Stem Cell Clinical Trials for Heart Attack Patients

May 8, 2014

(Medical Xpress) – A new study in Nature challenges research data that form the scientific basis of clinical trials in which heart attack patients are injected with stem cells to try and regenerate damaged heart tissue. Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), report May 7 that cardiac stem cells used in ongoing clinical trials – which express a protein marker called c-kit – do not regenerate contractile heart muscle cells at high enough rates to justify their use for treatment.