Heart cells created from human stem cells successfully restored damaged heart cells in monkeys. This was published in Nature magazine on April 30th, and the scientist came to the conclusion that if it can work in monkeys, it could probably work in humans too. The main question before the experiment begun was if it was possible to create enough heart cells to remuscularize damaged hearts in a large animal whose heart size and physiology is similar to that of the human heart. The scientist induced a heart attack on these monkeys and injected them with 1 billion heart cells derived from human stem cells and put the monkeys on immunosuppressive therapy to prevent rejection of the transplanted human cells. On average the transplanted stem cells regenerated 40 percent of the damaged heart tissue over subsequent weeks. This new research is very interesting because if this same experiment can be duplicated in human, the possibilities are endless with what else stem cells can help cure. This approach with stem cells could be ready for clinical trials in four years. The only problem with stem cell therapy is where to get the stem cells from. There are a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas because the best stem cells come from a human fetus.
