Vitamin C Helps Stem Cells Morph Into Heart Cells

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http://story.news./news?tmpl=story2 & cid=571 & ncid=751 & e=3 & u=/nm/20030331/hl_nm/vitamin_heart_dcVitamin C Helps Stem Cells Morph Into Heart CellsMon Mar 31, 5:23 PM ET Health - Reuters By Jacqueline Stenson NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a finding that could aid the development of new heart failure treatments, scientists have observed that vitamin C prompts mouse embryonic stem cells to transform into beating heart muscle cells. A big hope is that doctors will one day have an ample supply of healthy human heart cells to transplant into failing hearts, potentially offering an alternative to patients whose only option is the transplantation of an entire donor heart. Heart failure is a chronic condition in which the muscle cannot pump enough blood to meet the body's needs. It results from damage to the heart muscle, often caused by heart attack. "Once the heart muscle is dead, we don't have a lot of tools for that," said study author Dr. Richard T. Lee, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (news - web sites), both in Boston, Massachusetts. Stem cells are so-called master cells that can develop into various tissues in the body. To date, the available method for coaxing embryonic stem cells into heart cells has proved slow and labor-intensive, according to Lee. "It's not a very efficient process," he told Reuters Health. But in the new study, published in the rapid track issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association (news - web sites), Lee and colleagues reported that vitamin C treatment readily coaxed embryonic stem cells to convert into heart cells. "Out of 880 compounds tested, only one of them actually worked and it surprised us," Lee said. The stem cells had been genetically altered to produce a bright green color if they converted to heart cells. Not only did they turn green, they also began rhythmically beating, results showed. It's not known how vitamin C achieves this effect or whether it would work with human embryonic stem cells. Research involving human embryonic stem cells is highly controversial and restricted by the U.S. government. Researchers also have been experimenting with transplanting adult stem cells taken from thigh muscle or bone marrow into damaged human hearts. But Lee said embryonic stem cells may hold the greatest promise because they are the most versatile. In a statement, Dr. Robert O. Bonow, president of the American Heart Association, said that "although the findings of this study are very preliminary with respect to their impact on human lives, this line of research has enormous implications for the future care of thousands of patients who develop heart failure each year. "Identifying mechanisms to transform stem cells into differentiated heart muscle cells is an important step toward clinical reality," Bonow said. SOURCE: Circulation 2003;10.1161/01.CIR.0000064899.53876.A3.