Claim: Scientists look to stem cells to mend broken hearts
Verdict: REFUTES

Retrieved passages:
title: Sara Rankin
text: as a postdoctoral researcher in 1992. , Rankin is based in the Faculty of Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), where she was appointed Professor in 2010. Rankin and her team are trying to navigate the mesenchymal stem cells found in bone marrow to injured sites around the body, where they can promote regeneration in nearby tissue and dampen the immune system. The regulated movement of stem cells from bone marrow to sites of tissue damage could treat broken bones or heart disease. She is the lead for biology and therapeutics at the Blast Injury Centre at

title: Induced stem cells
text: rat hearts and reduced remodeling of the heart after ischemic damage. The team of scientists, who were led by Sheng Ding, used a cocktail of nine chemicals (9C) for transdifferentiation of human skin cells into beating heart cells. With this method, more than 97% of the cells began beating, a characteristic of fully developed, healthy heart cells. The chemically induced cardiomyocyte-like cells (ciCMs) uniformly contracted and resembled human cardiomyocytes in their transcriptome, epigenetic, and electrophysiological properties. When transplanted into infarcted mouse hearts, 9C-treated fibroblasts were efficiently converted to ciCMs and developed into healthy-looking heart muscle cells within the organ. This

title: Hwang Woo-suk
text: this ability to turn stem cells into a super "repair kit" for the body, theoretically to use stem cells to generate healthy tissue to replace that either damaged by trauma or compromised by disease. The many conditions and illnesses that may eventually be treated by stem cell therapy include Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, burns, and spinal cord damage. In March 2012, it was announced that Hwang would collaborate with Russian scientists in an attempt to clone a woolly mammoth from remains found in Siberia. He had previously successful cloned eight coyotes in March 2011 using

title: Stem-cell therapy
text: cells with the use of embryonic stem cells. Since 2003, researchers have successfully transplanted corneal stem cells into damaged eyes to restore vision. "Sheets of retinal cells used by the team are harvested from aborted fetuses, which some people find objectionable." When these sheets are transplanted over the damaged cornea, the stem cells stimulate renewed repair, eventually restore vision. The latest such development was in June 2005, when researchers at the Queen Victoria Hospital of Sussex, England were able to restore the sight of forty people using the same technique. The group, led by Sheraz Daya, was able to successfully

title: Stem-cell therapy
text: developed, non-invasive technique developed for easier clinical use. Dogs receiving this treatment showed greater flexibility in their joints and less pain. Stem cells have successfully been used to ameliorate healing in the heart after myocardial infarction in dogs. Adipose and bone marrow derived stem cells were removed and induced to a cardiac cell fate before being injected into the heart. The heart was found to have improved contractility and a reduction in the damaged area four weeks after the stem cells were applied. A different trial is underway for a patch made of a porous substance onto which the stem

title: Cardiovascular Cell Therapy Research Network
text: clinical trials studying treatments for heart disease and peripheral artery disease. These sites include: In July 2008, the CCTRN opened enrollment in two studies in patients who had recently suffered heart attacks: TIME () and LateTIME (). The purpose of these studies was to determine if stem cells safely taken from an individual’s bone marrow could be transplanted back into the injured heart muscle of the individual and improve the heart’s ability to pump following a heart attack, as well as to determine the best time for transplanting the cells following a heart attack. The results of both studies were

title: Annarosa Leri
text: Annarosa Leri Annarosa Leri, MD was an associate professor at Harvard University. Along with Professor Piero Anversa, Leri was engaged in medical research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Since at least 2003 these researchers have been investigating the ability of the heart to regenerate damaged cells using cardiac stem cells. A paper published in "The Lancet" in 2011 and another paper published in "Circulation" in 2012 were acknowledged by Leri and Anversa to have “fictitious data points” and “altered figures.” The 2012 paper was retracted, and the 2011 paper already had an

title: Stem cell laws
text: cells have been used to repair tissue damaged by disease. Because Embryonic Stem (ES) cells are cultured from the embryoblast 4–5 days after fertilization, harvesting them is most often done from donated embryos from "in vitro" fertilization (IVF) clinics. In January 2007, researchers at Wake Forest University reported that "stem cells drawn from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much of the same promise as embryonic stem cells." The European Union has yet to issue consistent regulations with respect to stem cell research in member states. Whereas Germany, Austria, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Portugal and the Netherlands prohibit or severely

title: Endogenous cardiac stem cell
text: Endogenous cardiac stem cell Endogenous cardiac stem cells (eCSCs) are tissue-specific stem progenitor cells harboured within the adult mammalian heart. It has to be noted that a scientific-misconduct scandal, involving Harvard professor Piero Anversa, might indicate that the heart stem cell concept be broken. Therefore, the following article should be read with caution, as it builds on Anversa's results. Endogenous cardiac stem cells were first discovered in 2003 by Bernardo Nadal-Ginard, Piero Anversa and colleagues in the adult rat heart and since then have been identified and isolated from mouse, dog, porcine and human hearts. The adult heart was previously

title: Stem-cell therapy
text: studied in people with severe heart disease. The work by Bodo-Eckehard Strauer was discredited by identifying hundreds of factual contradictions. Among several clinical trials reporting that adult stem cell therapy is safe and effective, actual evidence of benefit has been reported from only a few studies. Some preliminary clinical trials achieved only modest improvements in heart function following use of bone marrow stem cell therapy. Stem-cell therapy for treatment of myocardial infarction usually makes use of autologous bone marrow stem cells, but other types of adult stem cells may be used, such as adipose-derived stem cells. Possible mechanisms of recovery

title: Robert Lanza
text: blood cells could potentially serve as a source of "universal" blood. His team discovered how to generate functional hemangioblasts (a population of "ambulance" cells) from human embryonic stem cells. In animals, these cells quickly repaired vascular damage, cutting the death rate after a heart attack in half and restoring the blood flow to ischemic limbs that might otherwise have required amputation. In 2012 Lanza and a team led by Kwang-Soo Kim at Harvard University reported a method for generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells by incubating them with proteins, instead of genetically manipulating the cells to make more of those

title: Cellular cardiomyoplasty
text: clinical trials today are a result of the work of donated stem cells that persist in the damaged myocardium for just days to weeks after delivery. Clearly, if cell survival is prolonged, these effects could be greatly enhanced. This is where a majority of research is being done today and several methodologies hold great promise. Cellular cardiomyoplasty Cellular cardiomyoplasty, or cell-based cardiac repair, is a new potential therapeutic modality in which progenitor cells are used to repair regions of damaged or necrotic myocardium. The ability of transplanted progenitor cells to improve function within the failing heart has been shown in

title: Organ culture
text: of bioartificial hearts, lungs, trachea's and kidneys. In 2016, another test was done in which human cells were used to assemble intricately structured hearts. The hearts ultimately proved immature but proved we were yet one step further to making a heart from stem cells. In January 2017, scientists from Salk Institute for Biological Studies managed to create a pig embryo that had part of its DNA, critical for the growth of organs, edited out. They then introduced human stem cells inside the pig embryo to have the human DNA fill in the gaps. Embryonic organ culture is an easier alternative

title: Endogenous cardiac stem cell
text: regenerative potential to replace lost/damaged cardiac muscle with autologous functional myocardium. Endogenous cardiac stem cell Endogenous cardiac stem cells (eCSCs) are tissue-specific stem progenitor cells harboured within the adult mammalian heart. It has to be noted that a scientific-misconduct scandal, involving Harvard professor Piero Anversa, might indicate that the heart stem cell concept be broken. Therefore, the following article should be read with caution, as it builds on Anversa's results. Endogenous cardiac stem cells were first discovered in 2003 by Bernardo Nadal-Ginard, Piero Anversa and colleagues in the adult rat heart and since then have been identified and isolated from

title: New York Stem Cell Foundation
text: of passing on these diseases. Specifically, the team removed the nucleus of an unfertilized egg cell and replaced it with the nucleus of another donor’s egg cell, but, unlike the work of previous groups, the researchers lowered the temperature of the egg, increasing transfer success rate. NYSCF Researchers Derive Pluripotent Stem Cells from Human Egg Cells, Reported in "Nature" "Time" magazine-cited research led by NYSCF scientists Dieter Egli and Scott Noggle reprogrammed the adult skin cells from Type 1 diabetes patients to the pluripotent state by combining these cells with unfertilized donor eggs, as reported in "Nature". The scientists then

title: Cell encapsulation
text: before more clinical trials are possible. Numerous studies have been dedicated towards the development of effective methods to enable cardiac tissue regeneration in patients after ischemic heart disease. An emerging approach to answer the problems related to ischemic tissue repair is through the use of stem cell-based therapy. However, the actual mechanism due to which this stem cell-based therapy has generative effects on cardiac function is still under investigation. Even though numerous methods have been studied for cell administration, the efficiency of the number of cells retained in the beating heart after implantation is still very low. A promising approach

title: Doris Taylor
text: As of 2014 she retains an adjunct professor role at University of Minnesota and is an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University. In 2008, Taylor's team published a paper in "Nature Medicine" showing that her team could create beating rat hearts using tissue engineering; the work was called a "landmark". The lab first stripped the cells away from a rat heart (a process called "decellularization") and then injected rat stem cells into the decellularized rat heart. Taylor also is conducting research which has uncovered differences in the underlying framework of male and female hearts and other vital organs. Doris Taylor

title: Heart nanotechnology
text: damaged and weakened. The more minor forms of heart failure do not require surgery and are often treated with medications ("WebMD - Better Information. Better Health"). The use of nanotechnology on treating damaged hearts will not replace these milder heart problems, but rather the more serious heart problems that currently require surgery or sometimes even heart transplants. A group of engineers, doctors and materials scientists at MIT and Children's Hospital Boston have teamed together and are starting the movement of finding a way to use nanotechnology to strengthen the weakened heart tissue ("MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology"). The first

title: Canadian Stem Cell Foundation
text: Stem Cell Foundation's goals are to invest a strategy for new treatments, sustainable healthcare, therapies and beneficial products. Their goals are beyond their capacity, such as "using cells to treat respiratory heart diseases, restore lost vision, create a source of insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes, repair damaged spinal cords, reverse the effect of MS, Crohn's disease and other autoimmune disorders, reduce the ravages of Parkinson's disease and reverse tumour formation in the brain, breast and other solid tissues." Their other goals are to bring together scientists, institutions, health charities, industry partners, regulators, funders and philanthropists in a universal vision in

title: Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award for Medical Sciences
text: the most fascinating areas of biology today. Knowledge in this field has advanced in the area of healthy cell replacement of damaged cells and in the area of the development of an organism from a single cell, a promising area of science leading scientists to investigate the possibility of cell-based therapies to treat disease. Scientists have hypothesized that stem cells may be the basis of treating diseases like Parkinson's disease, diabetes, and heart disease. The topics of the sixth term, 2009-2010 were selected to be for Grand Hamdan International Award - Diabetes Mellitus, and for Hamdan Award for Medical Research