Sticking it to Infarcted Myocardium

San Francisco, CA -

Lee et al published (Antibody Targeting of Stem Cells to Infarcted Myocardium. Stem Cells. 2006 Nov 30; [Epub ahead of print]) a novel technique of increasing the concentration of stem cells to specific injured tissue.

The investigators generated an antibody-like molecule of which one end binds to stem cells (well the actual antibody, anti-CD45) binds to many cells, but they treated the stem cells with it in vitro, so it was bound only to stem cells) and the other end binds to proteins that are only exposed in injured hearts (myosin light chain).

Injecting CD34 stem cells that are "armed" with this "bispecific" antibody caused a significantly higher degree of cord blood stem cell localization into injured myocardium (injured in rat left anterior descending artery ligation model) as opposed to control stem cells. Additionally, the degree of cardiac healing was higher.

Since it is known that approximately 90-99% of injected stem cells usually do not enter the heart, when stem cells are used for treatment of infarction, this technology have great applications for cardiac repair specifically, but for appropriately directing stem cells to where they are wanted in general.