Even when someone survives a heart
attack, significant amounts of muscle tissue die, damaging the heart. The
Associated Press recently reported on a technology which someday may allow
such tissue to be regrown.
The March 17 story described experiments
conducted at the Louisiana State University Medical Center by Dr. William
C. Claycomb. Claycomb sucessfully transferred genetically modified heart
cells from mice into the damaged heart of a pig, where the cells survived
and acted like normal heart muscle, although it is unclear if the mouse
cells actually assisted in the working of the pig heart.
Although any use in humans for
this sort of technology is years, if not decades away, the importance of
this experiment is demonstrating that it is at least possible.
“It is a very important advance,”
said Dr. Kenneth R. Chien, a professor of medicine at the University of
California, San Diego. “The work challenges the dogma that it is
not possible to create a cell line that displays the unique features of
an intact heart.”