First U.S. babies treated in unique study of adult stem cell therapy for congenital heart disease
UM SOM surgeons are injecting the cells into the babies' hearts during open-heart operations at the University of Maryland Medical Center. ISCI is supplying the stem cells for the procedures. Even with extensive surgical treatments, HLHS babies still do not have optimal outcomes. The researchers hope the cells will increase the babies' chances of survival as HLHS limits the heart's ability to pump blood from the heart to the body. "The premise of this clinical trial is to boost or regenerate the right ventricle, the only ventricle in these babies, to make it pump as strongly as a normal left ventricle," says lead researcher Sunjay Kaushal, MD, PhD, associate professor of surgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine and director, pediatric cardiac surgery, University of Maryland Medical Center. "We are hoping this therapy will be a game-changer for these patients." Kaushal says the first two patients, who were both four-months-old when the ...