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Trial seeks to mend weak hearts with stem cells

SINGAPORE — Heart attack patients may be offered a lifeline using their own stem cells, if a new therapy that the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) is trying out comes into fruition.

The National Heart Centre Singapore has embarked on a new study that seeks to regenerate damaged heart tissue through an injection of the patients’ own stem cells. REUTERS file photo

The National Heart Centre Singapore has embarked on a new study that seeks to regenerate damaged heart tissue through an injection of the patients’ own stem cells. REUTERS file photo

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SINGAPORE — Heart attack patients may be offered a lifeline using their own stem cells, if a new therapy that the National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) is trying out comes into fruition.

In partnership with French biotechnological firm CellProthera, the NHCS has embarked on a new study that seeks to regenerate damaged heart tissue through an injection of the patients’ own stem cells, which have the potential to grow into a variety of heart cell types.

Associate Professor Philip Wong, senior consultant with the centre’s department of cardiology, said that about one in three patients may be helped by this regenerative therapy. These are patients who suffer from a weakened heart that can potentially shorten his or her lifespan.

When someone has a heart attack, the person usually undergoes a procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention. A balloon-tipped tube is inserted into an artery and the balloon inflated to widen blocked areas, where blood flow to the heart muscle has been reduced or cut off.

This procedure is considered “less invasive” as the body is not cut open, Assoc Prof Wong said.

However, there are a group of patients who continue to develop weak hearts or suffer from heart failure. It is unclear which patients are more susceptible, he said, adding that it may be due to their age, ethnicity, how long they have been smokers, and other factors.

Over the next year, 10 such patients would be recruited here in the early phases of a trial to test for the safety of stem cell therapy. Under this novel procedure, blood samples drawn from the patients will be sent to a “cell therapy facility” in the Health Sciences Authority, which harvests 15ml-grafts containing purified stem cells.

The grafts will then be injected into the infarcted zone of the heart. The patients do not have to be hospitalised, but will be observed for at least six months after the procedure has been completed.

CellProthera will provide the systems used to graft and multiply stem cells in this procedure. Its chairman, Professor Philippe Henon, said that using the patients’ own stem cells increases the therapy’s success rate, as the cells would develop in ways that are tailored to each individual.

The company is unable to say how much the therapy will cost at this point. However, by averting subsequent heart failure, it could help reduce future loss of income and hospitalisation needs, Prof Henon said.

CellProthera is also conducting trials in France and the United Kingdom. Six out of seven heart patients who underwent a similar therapy during a previous trial in 2002 are still leading healthy lives now, he added.

For its first trial in Asia, the firm chose Singapore because of its “dynamic environment for biotechnology research with high-tech infrastructure and a supportive regulatory environment”, Prof Henon said.

The NHCS, on the other hand, agreed to the partnership for the novelty of the procedure, Assoc Prof Wong told TODAY. “Stem cells had been coming into clinical practice only in the last 10 years, and even more recently, in the cardiac realm,” he said.

A similar trial which followed 11 heart-attack patients in Greece, who had stem cells injected into their hearts, saw up to a 40 per cent reduction in the size of scarred tissue.

The study, published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Translational Research last year, also reported that while patients suffering from heart failure typically had a high annual mortality rate (70 per cent), all who underwent the trial were still alive three years after the procedure.

As of publication time, one had suffered a further cardiac event, such as a heart attack or stroke, or had been re-admitted to the hospital for reasons related to their heart condition.

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