Cell therapy, which consists of injecting cardiac stem cells for patients with fragile hearts, has shown encouraging results, but is far from revolutionary for the patients concerned, underlines a French cardiologist, author of a thesis devoted to the subject.
The infarction leaves traces, including in the cells of the heart which can be found badly damaged. These sequelae can deform the heart and increase the risk of heart failure. Apart from transplantation, considered in the most serious cases, several techniques have been developed to repair damaged heart cells.
Since the 2000s, researchers have been studying the possibility of injecting stem cells into the heart. However, in the space of twenty years, few major discoveries have been made in this field, underlines the cardiologist Denis Angoulvant, who practices at the University Hospital of Tours and who wrote a thesis on cell therapy of the heart. “There are very good preliminary results, but disappointing clinical results, explains the doctor to the Figaro.
A first global experiment was carried out in 2000 by Professor Philippe Menasché, cardiac surgeon at the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital and pioneer in cell therapy to treat heart failure, with transplants of human muscle stem cells. “However, the transplanted cells did not allow regeneration of the heart cells,” notes Dr. Angoulvant.
Towards “cell-drugs”?
Fourteen years later, another world first was obtained in 2014, in collaboration with the team of Professor Jérôme Larghero (Saint-Louis Hospital, Paris), specializing in biotherapies. It consisted of the implantation of heart cells derived from human embryonic stem cells, which made it possible to treat a patient suffering from severe heart failure.
Since then, little progress has been observed regarding the improvement of cardiac functions in the people studied, which according to Denis Angoulvant, can be partly explained by the treatments administered: “Patients also receive very effective drugs, which can hide the impact of cell therapy,” he assumes.
Today, the hopes of cellular therapy for the heart are focused more on the protective effect of these stem cells: “We are working on cell-drugs which would produce the molecules adapted to treat this or that heart”, specifies Professor Angoulvant, referring to a project currently in the experimental phase.
.
