Researchers at NEOMED Study Cardiac Stem Cells

ROOTSTOWN, Ohio -- On the screen, they’re little more than white, black and gray shapes. Some are long and narrow, others almost perfectly round, giving no hint of the secrets they might hold.

Under a microscope, it’s easier to see what they are: cells, such as a sample taken from a patient about to undergo heart bypass surgery. Some of these cells, the lab workers hope, are stem cells.

As a group of students gathers around the screen, Dr. William M. Chilian interjects and points to some of the black shapes.

“These darker areas are all cells,” he says as he circles them with a capped pen. “Some of them are possibly stem cells.”

It is in this lab on the campus of Northeast Ohio Medical University where research is conducted on using the body’s own stem cells – rather than injecting new ones – to redirect blood vessels around the heart, thereby performing a natural heart bypass surgery.

“Conceivably, each one of us can grow our own bypass,” explains Chilian, chairman of the Integrative Medical Sciences Department at NEOMED. “We can understand the basis for why somebody can or cannot grow these blood vessels and unlock those mysteries that could potentially have a huge benefit in treating ischemic heart disease.”

The NEOMED researchers are using rats as models to study the way blood vessels grow in the heart. “Rats have many of the same biological responses to injury and reductions in blood flows as a human does,” Chilian says. So we’re using the rat as the model.”

The project would be unique to NEOMED, except for of one of Chillian’s trainees doing similar research at New York Medical College. The difference between the two, Chilian comments, is that while the student in New York is trying to rebuild a heart after a heart attack, the labs at NEOMED are trying to prevent the heart attack in the first place.

Dr. Marc Penn, leading the project, announced in June that the redirection of the body’s stem cells showed significant results in those who had gone through advanced heart failure.

“In patients who received this molecule, they could show clear improvement in cardiac output and in other parameters that suggested those patients’ hearts had improved their function,” says Dr. Walter Horton, vice president of research at NEOMED and dean of its College of Graduate Studies. “Was it because stem cells came in and grew and repaired the heart? [Penn] doesn’t know yet. But he knows it worked.”

Research at NEOMED is limited to four focus areas -- neuroscience, skeletal biology, mental health and cardiovascular metabolic disease, which Penn and Chilian’s project falls under -- that cover some of the more prevalent medical issues.

Horn points out that skeletal biology researchers are looking at patients growing new bone after traumatic injuries and mental health is looking at treating schizophrenia with psychosocial engagement. As he explains, psychosocial engagement replaces drug treatments by creating social networks around those diagnosed with schizophrenia and eliminating the social stigmas.

Research underway at NEOMED is integral to its mission to graduate well-rounded physicians, pharmacists and medical professionals.

“It exposes the students to what it means to do research so they’ll go on and think about that research when they are practitioners,” Horn says.

Other medical schools, most of which offer a wide range of advanced medical degrees, often have very specialized research for students looking to focus on specifically medical research. At NEOMED, with only masters, M.D. and Ph.D. programs, the focus needs to be on the student’s educational experience.

“Marc Penn is not just a researcher, he’s one of their teachers,” Horton says. “He’ll be standing there talking to them about how the heart works. The idea that we can integrate the science they’re doing [in the labs] into the lectures is important.”

NEOMED has secured $17 million in outside funding over the past year, including $6 million from the National Institutes of Health.

“If you look across the public universities in Ohio, that’s the largest amount of NIH funding,” Horton says. “Which makes sense because we’re a medical university.”

Other medical schools, Horton comments, direct portions of their external funding toward clinical trials and their associated hospitals. At NEOMED, because the school lacks a hospital affiliation, all of the external funding for research goes to research.

Even with record-setting funding and the specialized fields being researched, breakthroughs are slow to come.

“We define breakthroughs a little differently than what I think the public layperson would define it,” Horton says. He cites Penn’s regenerative heart research: “It was a really exciting year.”

“It’s always a difficult prediction to make,” Chilian says of the time it takes before the lab’s effort reaches the final stage of being available to the public. “It could be several years. However, there are success stories in my department.”

One colleague who’s researching regenerative tissue, he says, recently began clinical trials on people.

“Those clinical trials are going very well so far. That’s actually been probably a five- to seven-year delay,” he notes.

Going through the entire research process, from basic inquiries to animal trials to clinical trials to Food and Drug Administration approval, is usually close to 10 years, Chilian says.

Pictured: Dr. William M. Chilian shows what he puts under a microscope at NEOMED’s Integrative Medical Sciences Department.

Editor's Note: The October edition of The Business Journal features extensive coverage of NEOMED and its growth over 40 years. Be sure to watch Wednesday's DailyBUZZ for the second in a series of video reports.

Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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