New artificial heart pump assists and repairs defective hearts

William Atkins
Monday, 08 September 2008 18:54

Science - Health

According to the National Institutes of Health article “Can Stem Cells Repair a Damaged Heart?”, “Researchers now know that under highly specific growth conditions in laboratory culture dishes, stem cells can be coaxed into developing as new cardiomyocytes and vascular endothelial cells. Scientists are interested in exploiting this ability to provide replacement tissue for the damaged heart. This approach has immense advantages over heart transplant, particularly in light of the paucity of donor hearts available to meet current transplantation needs.”

The inventors describe their device within their patient application: “A biologic ventricular assist device that also has the capability to capture, grow, and administer stem cells to regenerate and restore damaged myocardium in the heart. The device works in conjunction with a traditional ventricular assist device and possesses an additional external path or tube that is in-line with the path of the ventricular assist device."

They continue, "The external path allows for the administration of stem cells, genes, genetically modified cells or other therapeutic biologic or pharmacologic agents, as well as leading to a stem cell collecting accessory … that captures circulating stem cells.”

Although the cardiac stem cells cannot totally repair the ailing heart, they do have the ability to repair it enough so that the VAD can be eventually removed from the body.

Then, the partially repaired natural heart can take over the circulation of blood within the human body, and perform the job until a transplant of another heart is available.

This article is based on the September 8, 2008 New Scientist article "Heart-Repair Pump" (subscription required).