Cindy Krischer Goodman | 6/1/2011

Joshua M. Hare
Louis Lemberg professor of medicine/director, Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine

Joshua M. Hare's research could reduce the need for drugs in repairing hearts.

» Joshua Hare hopes his new stem cell therapy can repair hearts organically, reducing the need for drugs and transplants. Until now, when damage occurred to a heart, cardiologists were able to treat the damage but not repair it or reverse it. Hare and his team of researchers discovered that stem cells injected into enlarged hearts reduced heart size, reduced scar tissue and improved function to injured heart areas.

"The big discovery is that we can treat heart disease with stem cells," Hare says. "When people think of stem cells, they think of embryonic stem cells. These are adult stem cells."

In a preliminary clinical trial, physicians used a corkscrew-shaped catheter to inject stem cells from the patient's own bone marrow. The patients were eight men, with an average age of 57, who had chronically enlarged, low-functioning hearts. All patients in the study benefited from the therapy and tolerated the injections. No one had serious adverse effects. The stem cell injections even improved old cardiac injuries.

Hare says his findings support more extensive testing that will take three to five years and involve hundreds of patients before the stem cell therapy is able to win FDA approval for routine use.