Their finding has huge implications for treating a number of conditions, including cardiovascular disease. The gel’s ability to help grow muscle cells has not yet been tested, Suuronen says. But thanks to restored blood flow, “dying cells may recover,” resulting in less scar tissue and a healthier organ. Of course, many challenges remain. “There’s two tissues we’re trying to create: blood vessels and contractile tissue,” says Ruel, who collaborated with Suuronen on the project. Contractile cells have proven more difficult to recruit, he says, adding that the UOHI team is working on this puzzle now.
At Dalhousie University in Halifax, Kishore Pasumarthi, associate professor in the department of pharmacology, is aiming to reduce scar damage after a heart attack by doing what he once thought couldn’t be done—kickstarting cell division in adult heart muscle tissue. Cell division in the heart stops in early infancy, he explains, which is why muscle cells that die after a heart attack are replaced by a scar. By putting cell-cycle proteins (which control cell division) into the damaged heart tissue of genetically altered mice, Pasumarthi’s lab has managed to reduce scarring by 30 per cent, and to improve the heart’s contractile function, too. “If we can do that, why not more?” he says. “Maybe, at one point, we won’t see any scar there at all.”
Cell-based therapies, many of them being developed in Canada, offer huge potential for fixing damaged hearts—although, experts say, their practical application is still a ways off. Even so, “it’s not crazy to think that, in 15 years, we may treat all stable ischemic heart disease with stem cell therapy,” Ruel says. Instead of mechanical interventions, like surgery or heart transplantation, he says, we’re approaching “the age of biological ones.”
Ruel believes it’s just a matter of time. “We know it’s going to work. We are living proof of it,” he says. After all, each of us grew from a tiny mass of stem cells into a fully formed adult. “Nature proves this concept every day.”
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