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For the initial blood drawing, the patients need to have his/her own blood drawn in amount of 250 ml. and the blood will be sent to laboratory for growing the cell. It takes about a week to grow and expand the cell in sufficient numbers in the laboratory using GMP manufacturing standard. These cells are name "Angiogenic Cell Precursors"
The Angiogenic Cell Precursors or ACP's for short, are greatly expanded in number of 5-50 million cells from 250ml. of blood drawn. A week later, the APC's are reinfused back into the blood vessels supplying blood flow to the heart muscle. This treatment is essentially the same procedure that is performed in the percutaneous balloon dilatation for coronary artery occlusion. Stem Cells have the potential to stimulate the formation of new blood vessels to bring more blood flow to the needy heart muscle fibers and to help rejuvenate the function of heart muscle. Clinically, the heart patient will have less chest pain and will notice an increase in ability to perform exercise.
What are "adult" stem cells?
Adult stem cells can be found in the body in various places during your entire life, for example in the bone marrow, in the blood and in the brain. In case of tissue damage the stem cells become active and “start” the body’s own maintenance and regeneration process.
What are "embryonic" stem cells?
Embryonic stem cells are stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of an early stage embryo. Embryonic stem cells are able to develop into each of the more than 230 cell types of the human body.
As they are not differentiated, unspecialized embryonic stem cells are able to differentiate into any cell type of the human body. Embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos that developed from eggs that have been fertilized in-vitro, from foetuses or from cloned eggs. For this reason, production of embryonic stem cells is ethically highly controversial.
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