reversal?, page-8

re: going back to $1.70 not good news for vcr.

We'll repair hearts
Exclusive by KELVIN HEALEY
16oct05

AUSTRALIAN researchers have developed a world-first treatment to reverse heart disease.

Clinical trials of the revolutionary treatment will begin in the next two months, with an anti-heart disease drug expected to be on the market within three years.
The treatment, using adult stem cells, will be injected into a patient immediately after a heart attack and will also be used to repair the heart muscle of people with chronic heart disease.

In Australia, heart disease causes about one in five deaths and costs $1.5 billion annually.

Melbourne-based bio-tech company Mesoblast, headed by one of the world's leading stem cell researchers, Professor Silviu Itescu, is behind the discovery.

Researchers have found a rare cell in bone marrow that triggers the regrowth of heart muscle and arteries. They have discovered a way to grow it outside the body.

When injected into the heart, it reverses heart disease by sparking arterial and heart muscle regeneration, a pre-clinical study has found.

Professor Itescu said it would prevent heart failure after heart attacks.

"Currently, there isn't any treatment that prevents or reverses heart failure. It is one of the major goals in medicine today," he said.

"We think it (the cell treatment) is going to make a major difference to outcomes in heart disease patients."

Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital has approved a trial of the treatment in up to 10 patients suffering chronic heart disease.

In the trial, which will begin within two months, the cell will be harvested from the patients, bred in large quantities and re-injected.

But a larger trial to be conducted in the US and Australia next year will involve heart attack patients injected with cells from other people.

Professor Itescu said donor cells would be multiplied and used in a drug to treat heart disease.

"We can inject these cells and they don't get rejected," he said.

Pre-clinical trials in which the cells were injected into people soon after a heart attack showed large increases in the number of blood vessels to vulnerable heart muscle, he said.