The prowess of a French team to repair heart victims of heart attacks

Repairing the heart after a heart attack

Emergency intervention following a myocardial infarction can reduce the risk of death. But the heart can suffer after-effects. Having lost muscle strength, it can no longer pump enough blood to send it to all the organs. We then speak of heart failure.

For several years, one of the challenges of cardiology has been to succeed in regenerating or repairing heart cells destroyed during a heart attack. Different strategies have followed one another with more or less success by injecting muscle cells, stem cells… but an announcement made in Lisbon as part of the congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) dedicated to heart failure (Heart Failure 2024 ) offers unprecedented hope in this area.

The good results of cell therapy with ProtheraCytes

Cellular therapies therefore aim to repair areas of the heart destroyed or damaged during myocardial infarction in order to restore normal cardiac function. In this context, the ExCellent study evaluates the effectiveness of the injection of autologous CD34+ stem cells or ProtheraCytes ® produced by the company CellProthera.

Following successful animal studies, the EXCELLENT study included 49 patients at 13 sites in the United Kingdom and France, randomly divided into two groups, one receiving standard treatment alone, the other standard treatment in combination with ProtheraCytes. The injection was deemed feasible and safe. All procedural events were expected and were resolved on site. The patients were followed by ultrasound and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) for 6 months.

Less risk of heart failure

Favorable changes in secondary endpoints re-read by a blinded central laboratory are as follows:

• A significant improvement in segment viability from baseline to month 6 was observed in the ProtheraCytes treatment group. In short, a potentially improved pumping capacity.
• A positive trend toward improvement in left ventricular volumes at 6 months was observed. Clearly, the treatment made it possible to prevent the dilation of the heart and therefore the progression towards heart failure.
• A more rapid decrease in NT-proBNP levels (a marker of cardiovascular risk and in particular heart failure) was observed in the ProtheraCytes group.

Prof. Zannad presented these new data at the Heart Failure 2024 Congress in Lisbon and said: “The EXCELLENT study confirms the potential of cardiac regenerative therapy. These data suggest that patients at high risk after a heart attack may benefit from ProtheraCytes and their ability to regenerate post-ischemic myocardial damage to prevent progression to other cardiovascular diseases. The evaluation of this innovative therapy should be continued in a larger phase 3 trial.“.

For a phase 3 clinical trial with the inclusion of 300 patients, funding of nearly a hundred million euros will be necessary.

Slide: Heart attack: little-known risk factors