Methods and compositions to treat myocardial conditions

Patent Number: 7,294,334

Myocardial infarctions cause massive lose of cardiac muscle, as well as cause numerous electrophysiological dysfunctions that can immediately or in the long-term lead to death.

The current patent has 2 independent claims that deal with this.

The first one teaches the application of a pacing therapy in the infarct area together with the percutaneous administration of porcine "donor cells" derived from pigs that lack the immunogenic alpha gal epitopes or the enzyme that generates them called alpha.-1,3-galactosyltransferase.

In the second independent claim instead of porcine cells, the donor cell is any "non-immunogeneic" cell.

We wonder whether the issuance of the second independent claim could hypothetically be used to block the numerous mesenchymal stem cell therapies that have entered clinical trials for myocardial infarction. The reason being that mesenchymal stem cells are believed to lack immunogenecity.

View this patent on the USPTO website.