Cedars-Sinai Opens Stem-Cell Research Clinic for Cardiac Patients

Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute has opened the doors of a brand new clinic specializing in regenerative medicine for cardiac patients. The institute hopes that this new clinic will become a research hub that will both recruit patients for clinical studies and direct them towards other facilities and clinical trials, depending on the patients’ needs.

Stem-cell therapies are already used to treat diseases like leukemia and lymphoma, but researchers have recently been studying their potential for repairing diseased hearts.

This new research harvests stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and guides the cells through a lab treatment in which they become cardiac cells. These cells are then injected into the heart tissue with hopes that they will assist in re-growing healthy heart tissue.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death worldwide, and in the U.S. alone, nearly six million people suffer from heart failure.  Until now, cardiovascular disease had no cure, and current treatments serve only to manage symptoms. Cardiovascular medicine has been directed towards maintenance, and a cardiac patient will undergo treatment for the rest of his/her life. This new research seeks to change that.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” says Andre Terzic, M.D., of the Mayo Clinic. “We are moving from traditional medicine...to being legitimately able to cure disease.”

Dr. Timothy Henry, the director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute’s Cardiology division, has high hopes for this new treatment, stating, “Our goal is to help make stem cells a regular treatment option for heart disease.”

According to Cedars-Sinai, this new clinic will offer consultative services to evaluate a patient’s potential candidacy in on-going clinical trials at Cedars-Sinai and elsewhere. When appropriate, a patient might be transferred to a more suitable study at another research center.  This service is believed to be the first of its kind, and regenerative experts and researchers hope that it will increase enrollment in clinical trials worldwide.

While no one questions the value of the research and the need for expansive clinical trials, doctors warn that this treatment is still experimental, and while there is hope, there is no certainty. Dr. Darrell Francis, cardiologist at Imperial College London, published a paper which suggests existing clinical trials in heart stem-cell therapy have been rushed, and Francis worries that the field’s exponential growth has created undue hype that might inspire false hope.

Francis told Nature: “I have a lot of hope for regenerative medicine, but our results make me fearful,” he says. “When the inevitable clinical advantages come, they may be ignored because these 15 years of unreliable data may have damaged credibility.”

Henry, of Cedars-Sinai, however, remains confident and optimistic. “Right now, many patients with advanced heart disease have limited treatment options. Stem cells offer not only hope but a real chance of a game-changing treatment.”