Japan’s first operation employing sheets of commercially available cardiac muscle stem cells has been performed, after the ground-breaking treatment was approved this year, one of the doctors said.
AFP writes that in the hour-long operation yesterday, sheets of muscle cells from regenerative products called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, were transplanted into the heart of a lady in her 50s.
It was the first time the regenerative therapy had been used clinically since receiving conditional clearance from the government in March.
Yoshiki Sawa, head surgeon at Osaka Keisatsu Hospital, told reporters following the surgery that “we hope this will improve the quality of life of the patient.”
The regenerative therapy was tested in eight individuals suffering from ischaemic heart disease, damage to the heart caused by restricted arteries.
All eight reported relief of symptoms and four had improved heart functioning, Japanese media said.
Sawa created the technology with Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for his discovery into iPS cells that have the capacity to turn into any cell in the body.
Sawa’s treatment is mostly for heart patients who have exhausted previous treatments.
It is predicted to enhance heart muscle function and thereby alleviate symptoms of heart failure, cardiac performance and exercise tolerance.
His team wants to do comparable operations on 75 patients by 2033 and report on the treatment’s efficacy, media reports stated.
The medication would then be completely approved, with its benefits and safety established over the next seven years, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper claimed.
Japan also conditionally approved a Parkinson’s disease treatment in March that transfers iPS cells into a patient’s brain after a successful clinical trial.
iPS cells are generated by stimulating mature, already specialised cells back into a juvenile stage – essentially cloning without the requirement for an embryo.
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