WEDNESDAY, July 21 (HealthDay News) -- Transplants of cytokine-overexpressing myoblasts may be useful for studying the potential of such stem cells in helping restore cardiac function after heart attack, and nanoburnings hold promise as an angioplasty tool, though it's a difficult approach, according to two studies being presented at the American Heart Association's Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2010 Scientific Sessions, held from July 19 to 22 in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Matthias Siepe, M.D., of the Medical University Center Freiburg in Germany, and colleagues transplanted skeletal polyurethane scaffolds seeded with myoblasts transfected with hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), or Akt1 into Lewis rats (10 per group) to see if cytokine-overexpressing stem cells could restore post-myocardial infarction cardiac function. They found favorable peak isovolumetric pressure, dP/dt(min), chamber stiffness, and Ees in rats receiving Akt1, SDF-1, and HGF, but not VEGF.

Alexandr Kharlamov, M.D., of the Urals State Medical Academy in Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation, randomized pigs to receive silica-gold nanoshells or saline (control group) to test plaque volume and atherothrombosis rate. He found the change of plaque volume after laser irradiation in the active group to be down an average 56.8 percent after six months, and up 4.3 percent in the control group, but concluded that nanoburning is a challenging approach.

"Nanoburning is [a] very challenging technique to demolish and reverse the plaque, especially in combination with stem cell technologies promising functional restoration of the vessel wall," Kharlamov writes.

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