A clinical trial to test the safety of treating heart attack damage with stem cells is about to get under way, following a study that showed the therapy helped in pigs. Two patients have been enrolled so far at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and a total of 48 are expected to take part across the country, said Dr. Joshua M. Hare, who is leading the study."Anytime something new comes along there is a sense of excitement and that’s the feeling that we have. And we obviously hope it will be borne out by the results,” Hare said in a telephone interview.The process uses adult stem cells taken from the bone marrow. These cells, called mesenchymal cells, have been shown to give rise to a variety of cell types. While they don’t have the potential to develop into as many cell types as embryonic stem cells, using them avoids the controversy over taking cells from a human embryo.In tests in pigs, stem cells taken from another pig’s bone marrow were injected into the animal’s damaged heart. After just two months, the stem cells had helped restore heart function and repaired damaged heart muscle by 50 percent to 75 percent.Those results are reported in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
