Stem cell therapy may be the next big saviour of heart patients and India could well be a superpower in this field.
CHENNAI: The bad news is by 2010, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 60 per cent of cardiac patients in the world will be Indians. But, the good news is stem cell therapy may be the next big saviour of heart patients and India could well be a superpower in this field.
While embryonic stem cell therapy continues to be embroiled in debates, therapy using adult stem cells (undifferentiated cells mostly found in the bone marrow of adults) has been found to help muscles and blood vessels of the heart regenerate - a big leap for cardiac therapy. And, at least two major medical centres in the country are set to launch stem cell therapy for heart failure.
While the Escorts Heart Institute will launch the facility sometime in mid-November, the Sri Ramachandra Medical College in association with Lifecell, the first private cord blood bank in the country will open a stem cell transplant centre early next year. “Cardiac stem cell therapy is on top of our agenda as we move from storage (of stem cells) to solutions,” says LifeCell vice chairman S Abhaya Kumar.
Heart attacks usually render some of the cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells that contract to make the ventricles pump the blood) dysfunctional. The basic method of this therapy is to harvest stem cells from the patient and inject them directly into the affected muscles of the heart. Whether the stem cells develop onto muscle and vascular cells or they aid in their regeneration remains to be ascertained. “My clinical trials in more than 400 heart patients have shown that injection of stem cells improve the function of muscles and blood vessels at the site, allowing the patients to lead a near-normal life,” says Amit N Patel, director of cardiac stem cell therapies, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, USA.
“There are about 10 million Indians with heart failure,” says Naresh Trehan, executive director and chief surgeon of Escorts. “For some heart disorders, drug therapy does not work. The number of heart transplants is coming down because of non-availability of matching donor hearts. After more than 30 years of research, there has been no breakthrough for an artificial heart. Stem cell therapy could be the answer for many heart ailments, though it will not completely replace other treatments.”
Dr Patel says India, with its immense talent in medicine and an integrated approach, can emerge as a superpower in stem cell therapy in five years.
Is India ready? “We are trained, able and ready to go,” says Dr Trehan about Indian doctors.
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