Do you know how many times our heart beats in an average lifetime? It beats over 2.5 billion times. Do you know which part of the organ is responsible for the heartbeats in unison? It’s the sinoatrial node or SAN, which acts like the captain of the ship and dictates other parts of the heart to follow the rhythm. SAN is the natural pacemaker of the heart, which is built of a set of specialized heart muscle cells. It sends signals to the other parts of the organ to beat in a certain rate through an electrical signal.

A number of factors such as aging or inherited mutations often lead to disturb the natural pacemaker function of the SAN, which results in slower heart rate and poor blood circulation. The optimum treatment to address these problems is installing an artificial electronic pacemaker into the heart. However, artificial pacemakers have a few disadvantages as well. They are mentioned below:

• They are unable to react to hormone signals in the heart.
• The implantation may also carry a risk of infection.
• There is no way to adjust the pacemaker in order to match a child’s natural growing heart.
• The artificial pacemaker’s battery life is 7 years. So after its due course, another surgery is needed to replace it with a new one.

Considering all the drawbacks of an artificial pacemaker, a Canadian research team at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Toronto is trying the build a stem cell-derived pacemaker that would be an ideal alternative to the natural system. They are aiming at transforming the embryonic stem cells into pacemaker cells so that they can naturally receive and give electrical heart signals.

There have been many researches and studies around artificial pacemaker with stem cells. But this research is special because it focuses on creating SAN pacemaker cells from the stem cells whereas other studies involve creating various types of cardiomyocytes.

Earlier in 2015, another team created SAN-like pacemaker cells from stem cells but they permanently inserted the gene into the DNA of the cells, which may lead to tumor and thus is not suitable for clinical procedures.  The McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine team has relied on a process that is gene insertion-free. Stephanie Protze, the first author in the report, said, “It’s tricky, you have to determine the right signaling molecules, at the right concentration, at the right time to stimulate the stem cells.”[1]

The research shows that 90% of the SAN cells that are derived from stem cells have the natural pacemaker functionality. That means that these cells can function as a natural pacemaker. This is an interesting step towards treating people with heartbeat problems.

The team had implemented the method on a rat module and now they are eager to implement the new technique to create pacemaker cells from human stem cells. This may be a time-consuming process and may take a longer time to come down to any conclusion, but the approach will enable the team to study heartbeat disorders and thereby to come up with drugs that can improve the condition.

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People suffering from week bones could recover with the help of stem cells, derived from pregnant women, according to a new study. The research has shown us the stem cells harvested from the amniotic fluid of the pregnant women is the answer to osteoporosis, even though it was conducted on a mice model. The researchers had come to this conclusion after observing 78% lower bone fractures among animals, who were suffering from fragile bone structures.

This finding has truly evoked hope for the children, who are going through various rare bone conditions since birth as well as adults, who are suffering from osteoporosis. Not only that! This finding may also prove beneficial for the astronauts, who lost bone mass in orbit. Pascale Guillot, the lead of the study, conducted by the University College London, said, “The stem cells we’ve used are excellent at protecting bones. The bones become much stronger and the way the bone is organised internally is of much higher quality.”

Previous studies have proved that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) collected at an early stage are more effective than that collected at a later stage. It has several other advantages as well. Early taken MSCs have the ability to expand into greater numbers when required in clinical therapies. They don’t form tumors. They make sure not to attack the immune system of the receiver. They are small thus can move easily. And last but not the least, these cells are easier to reprogram, so they can grow into different types of cells.

The researchers’ team at the University College London experimented with MSCs that were collected from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women. They injected the MSCs into mice with fragile bone conditions. Another interesting finding of the study was the way the team completed the research. Anyone might think that the stem cells, injected into the mice, must have done the healing effects as well as helped to create new bones primarily. But this is a wrong notion. The study shows that the stem cells released growth factors which stimulated the bone cells to build stronger bones in the mice model.

Guillot confirmed, “The discovery could have a profound effect on the lives of patients who have fragile bones and could stop a large number of their painful fracture.” Following the successful study with mice, Guillot and the team are hopeful to apply the method in treating brittle bone disorders and osteoporosis that affected more than 44 million patients in the US. Guillot said, “The discovery could have a profound effect on the lives of patients who have fragile bones and could stop a large number of their painful fractures.”

The team is hoping to go about with the human trials within the next two years. If the technique proves effective for humans as well, it could help kids, affected in the womb and during birth. This process will truly help them build healthy bones. And what makes it all the more interesting is, the stem cells used in this research can be transplanted from one patient to another without MSCs matching between the donor and the receiver.

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