Bone marrow injection reverses damage.

• Position: Heart Disease - Brief article

Injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure, University at Buffalo (N.Y.) researchers have demonstrated for the first time. They have shown that this noninvasive procedure increases myocytes, or heart cells, by twofold and reduces cardiac tissue injury by 60%. The therapy also improves function of the left ventricle, the primary pumping chamber of the heart, by 40%, and reduces fibrosis, the hardening of the heart lining that impairs its ability to contract, by up to 50%. Mesenchymal stem cells are found in the bone marrow and can differentiate into a variety of cell types.

"Injecting MSCs or factors released by MSCs improves ventricular function, promotes myocardial regeneration, lessens cell death and fibrotic remodeling, recruits bone marrow progenitor cells, and induces myocardial expression of multiple growth factor genes," affirms Techung Lee, associate professor of biochemistry. "These findings highlight the critical...