Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Scientists claim to have, for the first time, succeeded in rejuvenating a ‘damaged’ heart by using skin cells.
The research result was first published online on May 22 in the European Heart Journal.
The research has opened up new avenues of treating heart failure patients as they can hope to get cured with their own, human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs).
It will be for the first time regeneration of heart would be possible using ‘healthy’ heart cells taken from the skin of elderly and diseased patients. Implying, people don’t have to depend on cell donations from young and healthy people.
Professor Lior Gepstein, Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Physiology at the Sohnis Research Laboratory for Cardiac Electrophysiology and Regenerative Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, who led the research, said ‘What is new and exciting about our research is that we have shown that it’s possible to take skin cells from an elderly patient with advanced heart failure and end up with his own beating cells in a laboratory dish that are healthy and young - the equivalent to the stage of his heart cells when he was just born.’
‘This is a very promising area of study, that’s why we are investing heavily in similar research as it could help us literally ‘mend broken hearts’, he added.
