A SERVICE
OF 
Skeletal Muscle
Transplanted Into Patient's Heart
PHILADELPHIA: October 1, 2000 · by TNN Medical Reporter
Virginia Baskerville
- For the first time, surgeons have transplanted a patient's own
skeletal muscle cells directly into a damaged area of the patient's
heart.
Investigators hope that the transplanted skeletal muscle cells
will help repair damaged heart muscle, because heart muscle does not repair
itself like skeletal muscle can.
The operation was performed on a
48-year-old man at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. The surgery was
part of a phase I trial to test the feasibility and safety of transplanting
such cells into hearts and to gain information on the cells' survival and their
potential ability to improve cardiac function.
About two weeks before
the procedure, a muscle biopsy was taken from the patient's arm and grown in
culture at Diacrin, Inc., a Charlestown, Massachusetts, company that is running
the trial with Temple and is funding the study. The cells were then
transplanted into the patient's heart during surgery in which the patient also
received a left ventricular assist device. The patient is awaiting a heart
transplant.
Researchers plan to study the hearts of study patients
following transplantation to determine whether the skeletal muscle survived and
helped repair the damaged heart.
Principal investigators in the trial
are Dr. Howard Eisen, medical director of Temple's heart transplantation
program, and Dr. Satoshi Furukawa, surgical director of the program.
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