Japan hospital performs first surgery using heart muscle stem cells
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A hospital in Japan has successfully performed the world's first surgery utilizing commercially available heart muscle stem cells. The groundbreaking therapy, approved this year, involved transplanting sheets of muscle cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, into the heart of a woman in her 50s during a one-hour procedure.
Surgeon Yoshiki Sawa, the head of Osaka Keisatsu Hospital, expressed hope that the surgery would enhance the patient's quality of life. Trials of this regenerative therapy were conducted on eight patients with ischemic heart disease, which is damage caused by narrowed heart arteries. Out of the eight patients, four experienced an improvement in their heart function.
Sawa developed the technology in collaboration with Nobel Prize-winning Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who has been researching iPS cells since their potential to develop into any cell in the body was discovered. The therapy is primarily designed for heart patients who have exhausted other treatment options and is expected to improve heart muscle function, leading to better heart failure symptoms, cardiac performance, and exercise tolerance.
The team plans to conduct similar operations on 75 patients by 2033, after which the treatment's efficacy will be fully authorized over the next seven years following extensive testing, according to the Asahi Shimbun daily.
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