Stem cell research could potentially take a huge step forward, as the largest trial is officially underway to determine if the treatment can repair a heart after a heart attack.
According to BBC News, 3,000 heart attack patients in 11 different European countries are participating in the new clinical trial.
Each person will undergo a standard treatment that involves inserting a small tube to widen arteries narrowed by a heart attack. Half the patients will have stem cells taken from their bone marrow and injected into their hearts.
"It's fantastic to be part of this," Neal Grainger, a 54-year-old from Essex, told BBC News. "It's strange having something taken out of you and then put back, but I hope it helps me and a lot of others."
If successful, the stem cells would repair tissue damage done to the heart by a heart attack and also reduce death rates. When a person suffers a heart attack, arteries can become clogged due to a fatty plaque that creates a blood clot. This can also leave tissue damage.
The trial is the next step in fighting heart attack and disease. While many people are surviving heart attacks, they become much more vulnerable should a second one occur because of the damage caused by the first. The study is the newest and largest of a series of related stem cell trials.
"This is the definitive trial," chief trial investigator Anthony Mathur, director of cardiology at Barts Health NHS Trust, told BBC News.
"After 15 years of research we will now have a clear answer. We hope to show that stem-cell injections can cut the number of people dying from heart attacks by 25 percent," he said. "If it works, it would open up a whole new branch of medicine, and give heart attack patients an entirely new treatment."
