Tooth stem cells for heart attack

Valencia, Spain -

Mesenchymal stem cells have been detected in bone marrow, peripheral blood, muscle and even in menstrual blood.

Another interesting source of stem cells of the mesenchymal type is the pulp of teeth. In fact, people have even patented methods of extracting stem cells from teeth.

There are companies in existance, such as Bioeden that actually bank baby teeth in the same way that people bank cord blood.

The important question is to what extent are these different types of stem cells actually useful for healing or regenerating damaged tissue?

In a recent paper (Gandia et al. Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells Improve Left Ventricular Function, Induce Angiogenesis and Reduce Infarct Size in Rats With Acute Myocardial Infarction. Stem Cells. 2007 Dec 13 ) stem cells derived from human teeth were labelled by retrovirus expressing GFP and inserted into the myocardium of immune compromised rats that underwent coronary artery ligation.

Improvement in cardiac function was observed. Specifically, 5 weeks after the heart attack and 4 weeks after injection of the cells (one and a half million per recipient), the treated mice had:

- reduced infarct size
- increased thickening of the anterior wall
- increased ejection fraction
- increased angiogenesis

These data support human case reports of adult stem cell therapy benefiting patients with heart failure, as well as published clinical trials of intravenously injected allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells for heart failure

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