Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The buildup of fatty deposits in the coronary arteries can lead to a myocardial infarction, one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Even if these patients are lucky enough to undergo surgery to repair the damage blood vessels, a large part of the heart tissue dies and is unable to regenerate itself. Over the past 20 years, stem cells have been used a means to regenerate the dead heart tissue. However, when these cells are injected into patients, the fail to integrate into the damaged tissue, resulting in very limited improvement in heart function. More recently, research has found the the stem cells themselves are not neccesary regenerate the damaged tissue, but rather its substances that they produce, called extracellular vesicles, that have a larger therapeutic potential. Thus, the focus of this study was to assess how extracellular vesicles from stem cells can be utilized to repair the diseased cardiac tissue. We isolated vesicles from stem cells derived from the amniotic membrane of the post-term placenta and treated cells of the heart (cardiomyocytes) and blood vessels (endothelial cells) with the vesicles after we depleted them of oxygen to mimic a heart attack. We found that the vesicles contain molecules that are involved in biological pathways that form new blood vessels and regenerate heart muscle tissue. We also found that vesicles were able to protect the cells from injury due to lack of oxygen, while also promoting cell division. Together, these results show that the use of vesicles repairing damaged heart tissue is a promising and novel therapeutic option for patients who have had a heart attack. In the near future, we hope to be able to test the efficacy of these vesicles in an animal model.