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Miller director performs first test for heart attack treatment

Joshua Hare, chief of the Division of Cardiology and director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the Miller School of Medicine, recently conducted the first human clinical trial to test a stem cell based treatment for heart attacks.

Fifty-three patients participated in the heart attack study and findings were presented to the American College of Cardiology’s Innovation in Intervention: i2 Summit in New Orleans.

Hare found that the stem he used, known as mesenchymal stem cells, have a range of advantages. Some advantages include that they can be taken from genetically distinct donors, they are easy to prepare and they tend to collect in areas injured by cardiac failure.

With 700,000 Americans expected to suffer from a heart attack over the following year, Hare hopes that the use of stem cells can be used to prevent or revere the damage caused by cardiac damage.

“This trial offers a distinct advancement in the field of stem cell-based treatments by providing safety and efficacy data for a unique and promising type of stem cell to treat cardiac damage,” he said.