Heart Function Improved by iPS Cell Transplant between Monkeys

Nagano, Oct. 11 (Jiji Press)--A Shinshu University-led research group said Tuesday it has succeeded in improving function of damaged hearts of monkeys by transplanting heart muscle cells derived from a different monkey's induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. "We hope to apply the method to human patients (of cardiac infarction) in a few years after solving the problems of irregular heartbeats and tumor formation," said Yuji Shiba, associate professor at the university who led the study. Transplantation of iPS cell-derived heart muscle cells is a promising method to treat a damaged heart. But although using iPS cells created from the patient's own mature cells has the advantage of causing no immune rejection, the method is time-consuming and costly. On the other hand, a large number of cells necessary for transplantation can be available swiftly and less costly when donor iPS cell are used. However, the immune response problem remains. In the project, Shiba and colleagues created iPS cells from skin cells of a special crab-eating monkey that demonstrate little immune rejection and developed the stem cells into heart muscle cells. They next transplanted the heart cells into five other crab-eating monkeys that suffered cardiac infarction. As a result, the transplanted cells were integrated into the monkeys' cardiac muscle tissue and improved their heart function by 5-10 pct. But all five monkeys showed irregular heartbeats within four weeks, according to the group's research paper published online by the British scientific journal Nature. END