Melbourne trial uses adult stem cells to treat severe angina

Bone marrow stem cells have been used to treat five patients with severe angina in a Phase I clinical trial at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne.

The trail aims to test the safety of using the cells, which are derived from the patients' own bone marrow, to regenerate the blood supply to the patient's heart. Results so far suggest the treatment is well tolerated by the patients.

The trial is based on research by Prof Silviu Itescu, of Columbia University and the University of Melbourne, who showed that injecting adult stem cells into the hearts of animals following a heart attack led to faster recovery and fewer cases of heart failure. The research was published in Nature Medicine in 2001.

Andrew Boyle, the trial's chief clinical investigator, said that although the trial was meant to test safety, rather than efficacy, the treatment had led to a reduction in the number of angina attacks suffered by the patients. Patients who were suffering up to five attacks a day now had only four or five a month, he said, although he would not discount the possibility of a placebo effect.

"This is the best outcome we could have hoped for," Boyle told reporters at the First National Stem Cell Conference in Melbourne.

In the trial, patients are given a drug which mobilises the endothelial precursor cells from the bone marrow into the blood. The patients' white blood cells are then filtered out and then purified, before being replaced in the patient's body with the stem cells.

It is understood that this is the first time this technique has been used in a trial. Similar trials have required a painful process involving sampling of bone marrow.

Once the trial is completed, researchers hope to enter multi-centre Phase II trials, involving about 100 patients, in 2004. Melbourne's Alfred Hospital has already signed up for the trial, and Boyle said centres in Sydney and Newcastle had also expressed interest.

The cost per patient for the treatment is roughly AUD$20,000, Boyle said.

One of the trial patients, Lorraine Macdonald, 57, told the conference that she felt she had a new lease on life. "I went from being a couch potato to someone who could do normal things, like playing golf," she said.