Stem cell research gives new hope for treating heart failure, heart disease, diabetes and Parkinson’s

March 2, 2017   EXCLUSIVE ROSE BRENNAN, The Daily Telegraph

The team will focus on developing a material that will enable stem cells to heal damaged tissue.

STEM cells could be routinely harvested and reinjected back into patients to treat heart attack, diabetes and brain degeneration in a breakthrough by Sydney scientists. 

The Heart Research Institute Sydney has developed a system to make stem cells glow when they are injected into tissue — meaning that doctors can see in real time if they are healing a damaged organ.

PhD student Richard Tan, who led the research project, said stem cells have the power to treat heart failure and heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s and cerebral palsy, but until now injected cells were failing to graft onto damaged tissue.

We’ve developed a tool that allows us to quickly establish whether tissue regeneration to save damaged hearts, brains, lungs and other organs, is actually working,” Mr Tan said.

“This will be great news for all the scientists working to harness the tissue regenerative powers of stem cells, which are highly sought-after in many fields of medicine.”

Thanks to the breakthrough, Mr Tan’s team can now focus on developing a material that will enable the stem cells to heal the damaged tissue.

It will be implanted into the organ before the stem cells and help them graft onto the tissue.

“Until now it hasn’t been working because after injecting the cells they immediately die, they don’t like that tissue because it’s dying and it’s not the right environment to support the stem cells,” Mr Tan said.

“We developed a model that is able to track these types of stem cells and can do it non-invasively. So now we can visualise these cells in the body and we are able to screen for different types of patches a lot quicker.

“In the future there will come a time when we will have a universal stem cell bank that can be used and they can be injected into people.”

He said the breakthrough put scientists closer to realising the full potential of stem cells, which had been eluding them for decades.

“For 40 or 50 years people have known the potential of them. They can turn into every organ throughout the body, but making them do that in a controlled manner is something science is still trying to do,” he said.

“We believe being able to provide the right environment for the stem cells to achieve their desired potential is very crucial and material is the way to do that.”

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