Transplants for myocardial scars

DETAILED DESCRIPTION It is an object of the present invention to provide cell transplantation methods for treating scar tissue in the myocardium which overcome deficiencies in the prior art.
The invention illustrates that atrial myocytes, smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts can be successfully transplanted into the scar tissue formed after ventricular necrosis and into tissue membranes and porous synthetic membranes.
The cell grafts form tissue that survived the three month duration of the study, improved myocardial function, limited myocardial remodeling, and stimulated angiogenesis.
The presence of the grafts did not induce overt cardiac arrhythmias.
When auto-cell transplantation occurred, immunorejection did not occur.
In a first aspect, the invention features a method of forming a stable myocardial graft in a mammal comprising, transplanting cells into myocardial tissue or scar tissue in the heart.
Cells are chosen from the group consisting of: adult cardiomyocytes, fetal cardiomyocytes, pediatric cardiomyocytes, adult fibroblasts, fetal fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, endothelial cells, and skeletal myoblasts.
In preferred embodiments of the first aspect of the invention, cells may be chosen from adult or fetal smooth muscle cells and fibroblasts, adult cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells may be co-transplanted, adult cardiomyocytes may be derived from atrial tissue, the graft may be derived from auto-, allo- or xenotransplantation, and the graft may comprise adult cardiomyocytes derived from autotransplantation, such as cardiomyocytes derived from atrial tissue.
In another preferred embodiment of the first aspect of the invention, the cells may be directly introduced into the myocardial tissue or the scar tissue, for example, by injection, and the injection site may be sealed with a biological adhesive to prevent leakage of the cells.
In other preferred embodiments of the first aspect of the invention the cells may be suspended on a biodegradable or non-degradable mesh, or may be transfected to deliver recombinant molecules to the myocardial tissue or the scar tissue