TOKYO, JAPAN: A hospital in Japan has carried out the world’s first surgery using sheets of commercially available heart muscle cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells), one of the surgeons said Wednesday.
Doctors at Osaka Keisatsu Hospital transplanted sheets of the cells into the heart of a woman in her 50s during an hour-long operation on Tuesday.
The procedure marked the first clinical use of the regenerative therapy since Japan granted it conditional government approval in March.
“Our hope is that this will improve the patient’s quality of life,” Yoshiki Sawa, head of Osaka Keisatsu Hospital and one of the surgeons, told reporters after the operation.
The therapy was tested in clinical trials involving eight patients with ischaemic heart disease, a condition caused by narrowed arteries supplying blood to the heart.
Japanese media reported that all eight patients experienced an easing of symptoms, while four showed improvements in heart function.
Sawa developed the treatment in collaboration with Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research into iPS cells.
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The cells are created by reprogramming mature specialised cells into an immature state, allowing them to develop into different types of cells in the body without using embryos.
The treatment is intended primarily for patients with heart disease who have exhausted other treatment options.
It is expected to improve heart muscle function, helping ease heart failure symptoms and improve cardiac performance and exercise capacity.
Sawa’s team plans to perform similar operations on 75 patients by 2033 and assess the treatment’s effectiveness and safety.
The treatment could receive full approval if its benefits and safety are confirmed during the next seven years, according to the Asahi Shimbun.
Japan also granted conditional approval in March for an iPS-cell treatment for Parkinson’s disease, involving the transplantation of the cells into a patient’s brain following a successful clinical trial.
