What Becomes of the Broken-Hearted?
The Future: Repairing from Within

The ability to repair or replace diseased tissues or organs with one’s own stem cells, presents a revolutionary way to re-think treatment and preventive strategies for heart disease, cancer and certain neurodegenerative diseases.

While the discussion of this therapy, known as regenerative medicine, has focused largely on embryonic stem cells, the use of adult stem cells is quietly picking up speed and is beginning to show some promising results.

The American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) held a luncheon briefing on the topic and its applications for cardiovascular disease on January 19, 2006, featuring Jay Edelberg, MD, associate professor of medicine, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, and Nabil Dib, MD, director of Interventional Cardiology Research at the Arizona Heart Institute who discussed how adult stem cells are being used to help repair and grow functional heart muscle, its application in humans and the expectations for this research in the next decade.

The ramifications for such research could be that one day soon, there may be less of a need for heart transplants and heart pumps as doctors can use a person’s own cells plus growth factor to repair and regenerate diseased heart tissue.

For more information on this research, please visit our consumer web site, Infoaging for an interview with Dr. Edelberg (http://websites.afar.org/site/PageServer?pagename=IA_expert_edelberg).

Funding for the media luncheon series was made possible through an unrestricted educational grant from Pfizer Inc.

AFAR grantee Dr. Jay Edelberg

Dr. Nabil Dib and Dr. Jay Edelberg