heart failure

“Scipio” is best known as the name of the masterful Roman general, Scipio Africanus, who defeated Hannibal during the Second Punic War. Thanks to researchers at the University of Louisville and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he may soon have to share his nominal glory with an ongoing clinical trial. The phase 1 study, “Cardiac Stem Cell Infusion in Patients with Ischemic cardiOmyopathy” (SCIPIO), set out to do something perhaps even more impressive than beating the Carthaginians. SCIPIO was the first in-human trial to assess whether cardiac stem cells (CSCs) can restore heart function in patients suffering from post-myocardial-infarction heart failure. The CSCs were isolated and expanded from a 1 gram atrial tissue sample taken from each patient during their coronary artery bypass. Three to four months later, about one million CSCs were transplanted into each patient’s heart – the advantage of this design is the minimized risk of rejection due to the autologous source of the cells.