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CNN Sunday Morning
Doctors Experiment With Cell Transplants to Heal Heart Attack Damage
Aired November 17, 2002 - 09:48 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Our medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets into more serious matters, not that love isn't serious. Nevertheless, more medical matters. He says that researchers are experimenting with cell transplants to repair the damage from heart attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is arguably the hardest working organ in the body. And by the time you're 50, your heart will have beat almost two billion times. And if heart cells die due to heart disease, they don't regenerate, leaving the heart forever weaker.
Not surprising then that scientists have been hard at work developing new parts for old hearts.
(on camera): After a heart attack, sometimes scar tissue forms, as you see here. As a result, the heart pumps blood less efficiently, leaving some patients tired and short of breath. As time passes and heart failure threatens, some patients have traditionally required mechanical implants or even a heart transplant.
(voice-over): But Dr. Patrick McCarthy of the Cleveland Clinic thinks there's another way.
DR. PATRICK MCCARTHY, CLEVELAND CLINIC: We're trying to repair the damage from the heart attack. So instead of a whole human heart transplant, now we're just transplanting cells.
GUPTA: Cells, from a patient's leg or arm and then grown in a laboratory for several weeks. Finally, they're injected into the patient's heart during bypass surgery.
MCCARTHY: We would inject the cells in a very small syringe, small volumes of these sells into area of the scar, and we saw that the heart function overall was improving.
GUPTA: Improvement is also being seen with adult stem cells. Dr. Manuel Galananas (ph) at the University of Luster (ph) in England injected the stem cells into 14 patients at the time of bypass surgery. Again, the heart appeared to strengthen.
But the heart muscle itself is not the only part that needs fixing in patients with heart disease. The arteries that feed the muscle often become damaged and clogged as well. So scientists are busy at work engineering new blood vessels.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This particular technology takes a small piece of, say, skin from the patient, and over a course of the next several weeks engineers these cells to form a blood vessel.
GUPTA: Grown in the laboratory and filling a critical need in patients who have already undergone heart bypass surgery. That's because...
DR. PETER FITZGERALD, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: A patient has already been bypassed and a lot of the vessels have already been used. So if they need another bypass, we really are at a rock and a hard place, if you will.
GUPTA: The vessels have worked well in animals, and studies testing them in humans will begin in about a year.
Most importantly, these new parts for hearts offer patients new hope. Hope for a muscle we often take for granted. One that can't miss a beat.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: Restoring heart function in people who have had heart attacks has been the holy grail of heart research for quite some time. Some of this research looks pretty promising. We're not quite there yet, and of course there's still no substitute, not to sound preachy here, but for eating right and exercising, and preventing those heart attacks in the first place.
O'BRIEN: All right.
ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN ANCHOR: In the meantime, though, what are the current options?
GUPTA: Well, you know, there are mechanical implants. There's the device called an lvad, left ventricular assist device, pretty big, fancy device that's basically trying to restore some of the function to the primary pumping chamber of the heart. The other option is medications to basically lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, things like that, to give whatever function the heart does have its most optimal sort of range.
O'BRIEN: How soon do you think this sort of, I guess you'd call it technology, biotechnology, will become readily available to ...
GUPTA: That's the real question. People talk about actually doing human trials in the next 12 to 18 months. After that, it usually takes a couple of years. So we would say -- we were trying to guess this ourselves -- about five to six years before we really start seeing this.
But the real neat thing about this, as you saw, Miles, there's just a syringe actually injecting that into the scar tissue in the heart. We're not talking about a big surgery here, we're not talking about many days in the hospital, in the ICU. A syringe into the chest.
O'BRIEN: You know, with heart disease being on the top of the list for killers in this country.
GUPTA: For men and women.
O'BRIEN: That might very well add a new wrinkle to the stem cell debate, I suppose.
GUPTA: You know, I think stem cells are just showing so much promise here and I think this is another good application. It talks about heart disease, but you and I have talked about Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, all these other neuro-degenerative diseases. Stem cells are showing a lot of promise. Not there yet, but hopefully soon.
O'BRIEN: Sanjay Gupta in the house with his excellent set-side manner. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Attack Damage>
Aired November 17, 2002 - 09:48 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Our medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta gets into more serious matters, not that love isn't serious. Nevertheless, more medical matters. He says that researchers are experimenting with cell transplants to repair the damage from heart attacks.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is arguably the hardest working organ in the body. And by the time you're 50, your heart will have beat almost two billion times. And if heart cells die due to heart disease, they don't regenerate, leaving the heart forever weaker.
Not surprising then that scientists have been hard at work developing new parts for old hearts.
(on camera): After a heart attack, sometimes scar tissue forms, as you see here. As a result, the heart pumps blood less efficiently, leaving some patients tired and short of breath. As time passes and heart failure threatens, some patients have traditionally required mechanical implants or even a heart transplant.
(voice-over): But Dr. Patrick McCarthy of the Cleveland Clinic thinks there's another way.
DR. PATRICK MCCARTHY, CLEVELAND CLINIC: We're trying to repair the damage from the heart attack. So instead of a whole human heart transplant, now we're just transplanting cells.
GUPTA: Cells, from a patient's leg or arm and then grown in a laboratory for several weeks. Finally, they're injected into the patient's heart during bypass surgery.
MCCARTHY: We would inject the cells in a very small syringe, small volumes of these sells into area of the scar, and we saw that the heart function overall was improving.
GUPTA: Improvement is also being seen with adult stem cells. Dr. Manuel Galananas (ph) at the University of Luster (ph) in England injected the stem cells into 14 patients at the time of bypass surgery. Again, the heart appeared to strengthen.
But the heart muscle itself is not the only part that needs fixing in patients with heart disease. The arteries that feed the muscle often become damaged and clogged as well. So scientists are busy at work engineering new blood vessels.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This particular technology takes a small piece of, say, skin from the patient, and over a course of the next several weeks engineers these cells to form a blood vessel.
GUPTA: Grown in the laboratory and filling a critical need in patients who have already undergone heart bypass surgery. That's because...
DR. PETER FITZGERALD, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: A patient has already been bypassed and a lot of the vessels have already been used. So if they need another bypass, we really are at a rock and a hard place, if you will.
GUPTA: The vessels have worked well in animals, and studies testing them in humans will begin in about a year.
Most importantly, these new parts for hearts offer patients new hope. Hope for a muscle we often take for granted. One that can't miss a beat.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GUPTA: Restoring heart function in people who have had heart attacks has been the holy grail of heart research for quite some time. Some of this research looks pretty promising. We're not quite there yet, and of course there's still no substitute, not to sound preachy here, but for eating right and exercising, and preventing those heart attacks in the first place.
O'BRIEN: All right.
ARTHEL NEVILLE, CNN ANCHOR: In the meantime, though, what are the current options?
GUPTA: Well, you know, there are mechanical implants. There's the device called an lvad, left ventricular assist device, pretty big, fancy device that's basically trying to restore some of the function to the primary pumping chamber of the heart. The other option is medications to basically lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, things like that, to give whatever function the heart does have its most optimal sort of range.
O'BRIEN: How soon do you think this sort of, I guess you'd call it technology, biotechnology, will become readily available to ...
GUPTA: That's the real question. People talk about actually doing human trials in the next 12 to 18 months. After that, it usually takes a couple of years. So we would say -- we were trying to guess this ourselves -- about five to six years before we really start seeing this.
But the real neat thing about this, as you saw, Miles, there's just a syringe actually injecting that into the scar tissue in the heart. We're not talking about a big surgery here, we're not talking about many days in the hospital, in the ICU. A syringe into the chest.
O'BRIEN: You know, with heart disease being on the top of the list for killers in this country.
GUPTA: For men and women.
O'BRIEN: That might very well add a new wrinkle to the stem cell debate, I suppose.
GUPTA: You know, I think stem cells are just showing so much promise here and I think this is another good application. It talks about heart disease, but you and I have talked about Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, all these other neuro-degenerative diseases. Stem cells are showing a lot of promise. Not there yet, but hopefully soon.
O'BRIEN: Sanjay Gupta in the house with his excellent set-side manner. We appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Attack Damage>
