Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists may have discovered a new use for cell therapy in sufferers with cardiac damage.

In the newest edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell, Harvard scientists reported that specific cells in the bone marrow known as c-kit+ stem cells interrelate with subsisting cardiac stem cells, exciting them to reconstruct and mend the smashed cardiac tissue. While earlier study has shown that cardiac function amends after stem cell cure, the specific apparatus was uncertain since stem cells are not supposed to become heart tissue.

Harvard Medical School Professor Richard T. Lee, who led the HSCI study, said, "Right now, we don't know the best way to heal the heart in the same way that injured leg muscles heal themselves."

"However, we have a number of clues that humans and other mammals like mice have at least a little capacity to do this."

The research reiterates these hints and hints that cardiac stem cell therapy may serve to encourage subsisting stem cells or progenitor cells to supplement repair, holding implications for the cure of cardiac illness and sufferers confronting post-heart attack rehabilitation.

While stem cells have conventionally been utilized to restore cells, Lee's research shows that they may also serve as stimulators to subsisting body cells.

"In some circumstances, stimulating the body's own stem cells at the right time might end up being simpler than growing cells in the laboratory and getting them back into the organ," Lee wrote.

Lee stated that his study opens the prospective for drug-like cure using stem cells.

"We might be able to stimulate the patient's own stem cells with chemicals or drugs that are more like traditional drugs," he wrote.