A team from Osaka University said it performed the world’s first pluripotent stem cell transplant in a medical clinical trial. Yoshiki Soa, a professor at the University’s Cardiovascular Surgery Unit, and his colleagues aim to use pluripotent stem cells in treatment by transplanting cardiac muscle cell plates over a three-year period to 10 patients with serious heart failure caused by cardiomyopathy.
As a first step, the team performed successful surgery on one patient this month and the patient has since moved to the general ward of the hospital. Cells on the biodegradable platelets that attach to the patient’s heart surface are expected to grow and secrete a protein that can regenerate blood vessels and improve heart function. Multipotent stem cells have already been derived from healthy donor blood cells and stored.
Each leaf is about 4 to 5 centimeters long and 0.1 millimeters thick. One hundred million cells have been transplanted. The team will continue to monitor the patient over the next year. “I hope (the transplant) will become a medical technique that saves as many people as possible, because I have seen so many lives that I could not save,” said Sawa at a press conference.
