Adult Stem Cell Research: Hope for Healing Hearts

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How Do Stem Cells Get to Your Heart?

HHL: How do stem cells move from one area of the body to another?

HARE: Scientists have injected cells directly into the heart through surgery or a catheter and even have added stem cells via veins outside the heart. All methods have been successful.

Somehow the cells know to go to the injured area in the heart. A cell is a living, intelligent thing and reacts to its environment. The cells respond to the signals that the injured, inflamed heart is releasing into the bloodstream and track the source.

These cells adapt to the body’s needs. Robert Simari, M.D., vice chairperson of cardiovascular diseases and professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, says they may develop into cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, that contract to eject blood from the heart’s ventricle, or main pumping chamber. Or these heart-saving stem cells may choose to become vascular endothelial cells, which line the inside of new blood vessels, or smooth muscle cells, which form blood vessel walls.

Since the heart itself—like the rest of the body’s tissue—has its own stem cells, we hope to treat patients someday without having to remove and transplant cells. We know the cells are in there. We could find a way to stimulate the body’s own cells. Then you could stimulate the injured organ to heal itself without taking anything out of the body.

Eventually doctors may choose to inject cells intravenously into patients who have just had a heart attack and directly into the heart in patients who have previously had a heart attack, which has allowed scars to grow.