SUNRISE, Fla., March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Bioheart, Inc., announced today that Dr. Karl E. Groth, the Company's Chairman and CEO will speak at the 2010 Translational Regenerative Medicine Forum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on April 8. Dr. Groth will discuss Bioheart's cell therapies for Congestive Heart Failure. Bioheart's therapies, which are currently in trials all over the world, aim to bring to patients, who otherwise would have little hope for a normal life, cutting edge therapies using as a basis, cells taken from their own fat or muscle tissue.
By fostering collaboration between public and private initiatives, the Foundation capitalizes on the academic, industry and governmental resources in regenerative medicine and expedites the pace of research so that innovative therapies are developed and delivered to patients more rapidly. The Regenerative Medicine Foundation has been designed to be the connection point for a variety of interests, with education and interdisciplinary collaboration serving as the core and sustaining values of the organization.
Bioheart has recently announced plans for establishing five Centers of Excellence in Latin America to provide its cell therapy procedures to patients suffering from congestive heart failure (CHF) and peripheral arterial disease (PAD) beginning next month, April 2010. In addition, Bioheart is conducting the first combined gene and cell therapy Phase I study approved by the FDA, the REGEN trial for MyoCell combined with SDF-1. Bioheart has also begun a Phase II/III double-blinded study of its MyoCell product, the MARVEL trial, designed to obtain approval from the FDA for that product, and released in September of 2009 preliminary results of that study. The study showed 35% improvement among treated patients in six-minute walk time, a result considered to be remarkable.
Heart failure is a debilitating condition. When heart failure is in an advanced state, the heart is unable to pump enough blood to the body to allow a person to enjoy a normal, productive life. This disease affects over 5 million people in the United States. Over 500,000 new cases are diagnosed annually in the U.S., making heart failure the most rapidly growing of all cardiovascular disorders. According to statistics provided by the American Heart Association, the approximate direct and indirect annual cost of heart failure treatment in the U.S. is $22.5 billion. Persons over the age of 65 experience heart failure as the number one cause of hospitalization and the number one cause of death.
About Bioheart, Inc
Specific to biotechnology, we are focused on the discovery, development and, subject to regulatory approval, commercialization of autologous cell therapies for the treatment of chronic and acute heart damage and peripheral vascular disease. MyoCell is a clinical muscle-derived cell therapy designed to populate regions of scar tissue within a patient's heart with new living cells for the purpose of improving cardiac function in chronic heart failure patients.
For more information on Bioheart, visit www.bioheartinc.com.
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CONTACT: Karl E. Groth, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, of
Bioheart, Inc., +1-954-835-1500
Web site: http://www.bioheartinc.com/
