Umbilical Cord Stem Cells Preserve Heart Function After a Heart Attack in Mice

A consortium of Portuguese scientists have conducted an extensive examination of the effects of mesenchymal stromal cells from umbilical cord on the heart of mice that have suffered a massive heart attack. Even more remarkable is that these workers used a proprietary technique to harvest, process, and prepare the umbilical cord stem cells in the hopes that this technique would give rise to a commercial product that will be tested in human clinical trials,

Human umbilical cord tissue-derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) were obtained by means of a proprietary technology that was developed by a biomedical company called ECBio. Their product,, UCX®, consists of clean, high-quality, umbilical cord stem cells that are collected under Good Manufacturing Practices. The use of Good Manufacturing Practice means that UCX is potentially a clinical-grade product. Thus, this paper represents a preclinical evaluation of UCX.

This experiments in this paper used standard methods to give mice heart attacks that were later received injections of UCX into their heart muscle. The same UCX cells were used in experiments with cultured cells to determine their effects under more controlled conditions.

The mice that received the UCX injections into their heart muscles after suffering from a large heart attack showed preservation of heart function. Also, measurements of the numbers of dead cells in the heart muscle of heart-sick mice that did and did not receive injections of umbilical cord cells into their hearts showed that the umbilical cord stem cells preserved heart muscle cells and prevented them from dying. Additionally, the implanted umbilical cord MSCs induced the growth and formation of many small blood vessels in the infarcted area of the heart. This prevented the heart from undergoing remodeling (enlargement), and preserved heart structure and function.

When subjected to a battery of tests on cultured cells, UCX activated cardiac stem cells, which are the resident stem cell population in the heart. Implanted UCX cells activated the proliferation of cardiac stem cells and their differentiation into heart muscle cells. There was no evidence that umbilical cord MSCs differentiated into heart muscle cells and engrafted into the heart. Rather UCX seems to help the heart by means of paracrine mechanisms, which simply means that they secrete healing molecules in the heart and help the heart heal itself.

In conclusion, Diana Santos Nascimento, the lead author of this work, and her colleagues state that, “the method of UCX® extraction and subsequent processing has been recently adapted to advanced therapy medicinal product (ATMP) standards, as defined by the guideline on the minimum quality data for certification of ATMP. Given that our work constitutes a proof-of-principle for the cardioprotective effects UCX® exert in the context of MI, a future clinical usage of this off-the-shelf cellular product can be envisaged.”

Preclinical trials with larger animals should come next, and after that, hopefully, the first human clinical trials will begin.