I could barely work. Now I go climbing in the Dales
ABOUT 50,000 people in the UK every year have a heart attack so severe that it creates scar tissue around the organ, and prevents it from functioning properly.
It can lead to early death. But experts are close to what could be a stem cell-based cure, one which is already helping patients.
Trials at Barts Health NHS Trust, funded by charity the Heart Cells Foundation, takes the patients’ own bone marrow, extracts stem cells in the laboratory and then injects them back into the heart tissue.
The stem cells generated new cardiac tissue and blood vessels, effectively encouraging the heart to heal itself.
Originally, the procedure was trialled within 24 hours of a heart attack, but further Europeanwide studies are now ongoing to see whether it might work several days afterwards.
Similar work is also being carried out on patients born with heart failure, with positive results. It raises the hope that the million people in the UK with heart failure may soon benefit.
A further trial is set to begin at the Royal Brompton Hospital in November into the similar Heartcel therapy, developed by Warwickshire-based biomedical firm Celixir.
Previous trials on 11 heart failure patients in Greece who were not expected to live more than two years found the stem cells left the hearts 78 per cent free of scars. Six years later, all patients were not only still alive but far more active than they had been previously.
Now, the UK arm of an international trial is being overseen by Professor Stephen Westaby, who described the decision to approve the research as ‘bloody marvellous’.
Michael Taylor, 60, was treated with stem cell therapy last year after being diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. The condition, for which there has previously been no cure, causes the heart to enlarge, sending the heart rate racing uncontrollably.
Mr Taylor, an engineer and martial arts enthusiast from Lichfield, Staffordshire, was left barely able to work after being diagnosed nine years ago.
Cardiologist Professor Anthony Mathur, at Barts Hospital, oversaw his stem cell treatment in July last year.
‘It was all very quick and largely painless,’ Mr Taylor says. ‘Within a few weeks I started to feel different. Before, I got breathless when practising martial arts – my heart would race and my chest became particularly tight in cold weather. It was horrible. But by Christmas I could walk and cycle further than ever, and in the spring I made it to the top of the Stepping Stones peak in the Derbyshire Dales, something I could only have dreamed of before.’