Valves growing with children

[NewbieSlo]

Another interesting article:


"Now for the first time-doctors are using stem cells to save their smallest patients, and possibly even keep them off medication and out of the operating room.

Analiah Duarte was born with one of the most lethal and rare heart defects. It's called Ebstein's Anomaly. One of Analiah's heart valves failed to form. .....


Doctors created that valve out of Extracellular Matrix-a substance extracted from a pig's bladder.

The implant acts like a fishnet. It captures stem cells flowing in Analiah's blood stream. The cells attach to the impact, grow around it, and create a new heart valve.

Dr. Burke explains, "we could see, for the first time in her life, the valve that we had created opening and closing."

A year later, Analiah's valve is working. As a result, her heart is now a third of the original size

Doctor Burke says Analiah's new valve should grow with her throughout her life-so she would not need a transplant, drugs, or more surgery. He also believes this could be used in adults to replace heart valves."



For more, please visit: http://www.wearecentralpa.com/story/growing-a-new-heart-valve/d/story/cF7ZQ8GLPkW-qpmjiRNiYA

 

[pellicle]

fascinating. Sounds from that wording that they aren't so much using stem cells as allowing the natural ones that exist at that time and place to do the job when the framework is provided.

 

[clay_from_nj]

We're getting closer and closer to growing a whole new heart: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140430133056.htm. A cardiologist told me several years ago that he participated in a study where they injected stem cells directly into the cardiac muscle of heart attack victims and witnessed how they regenerated damaged tissue all on their own. Animals are benefiting from this technology right now: http://www.vet-stem.com/owners.php.

 

[NewbieSlo]

Hi Clay,

I sometimes whish I was a dog (in hands of good owner) I also read about stem cells treatment in animals, not to mention, that it seems that if you takea dog to the vet he is far more likely to get quick and accurate diagnosis and treatment than a human :-(

 

[NewbieSlo]

Another article on growing heart valves:


"...But researchers say they've found a way around that, using a child's skin cells to make a new pulmonary valve for the youngster's heart to replace a faulty one. Using a child's own skin cells to create the new valve reduces the risk of rejection, the researchers explained, and means the valve can grow with the patient -- reducing the need for future valve replacements.
The findings appear in the September issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

"Current valve replacements cannot grow with patients as they age, but the use of a patient-specific pulmonary valve would introduce a 'living' valvular construct that should grow with the patient," lead author David Simpson, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a journal news release.
"Our study is particularly important for pediatric patients who often require repeated operations for pulmonary valve replacements," he added.

In the study, Simpson's team developed a method to turn skin cells from a biopsy into cells that help create a tissue-engineered pulmonary valve.
The pulmonary valve connects the heart to the pulmonary artery, which carries blood from the heart to the lungs.

"We created a pulmonary valve that is unique to the individual patient and contains living cells from that patient," study senior co-author Dr. Sunjay Kaushal said in the news release. "That valve is less likely to be destroyed by the patient's immune system, thus improving the outcome and hopefully increasing the quality of life for our patient."

Some day, "it may be possible to generate this pulmonary valve by using a blood sample instead of a skin biopsy," Kaushal added.
The next step in this research will be to implant the new valves in patients to assess how well they work and how long they last, the study authors said.

http://consumer.healthday.com/genera...ds-691160.html

 

[Lisa2]

I pray it works.

 

[NewbieSlo]

If I report the promising news, I also have to report the less-promising. In Europe we had the LIFEVALVE project, the aim of it was to create living heart valves made of the patient's own cells. The project started in November of 2008 and ends in October 2014, Switzerland was the coordinating country, also participating were Hungary, Netherlands, Germany, Austria.

And now I came across the report where it is written, that authors from Zurich institute “foresaw some significant limitations for the clinical applicability of tissue-engineered autologous heart valves in the human due to timing, logistical, and expense issues. The need for cell harvest, scaffold seeding, and bioreactor culture for this approach were sufficiently substantial that they felt that clinical application was not realistic.” http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1792235

Since Zurich is in Switzerland and Switzerland is the coordinating country, it is easy to put two and two together and conclude that EU project did not yield satisfactory results for us, who are hoping that autologous, living heart valve would become a realty sooner than later. I’m sure that the research is going on in other parts of the world as well, and I do believe that one day this will be a reality.

To read about the scope of the LIFEVALVE project, you can check http://ec.europa.eu/research/infoce...fm?p=ss-lifevalve&item=Infocentre&artid=26674