Prof. Roberto Bolli

Everyone risks suffering a heart attack, even if you eat healthy, exercise a lot and don't smoke. Luckily, a heart attack is not always fatal, although part of the heart dies after every attack. In that case the affected cardiac cells are dysfunctional and will be replaced by scar tissue. This means the hart works insufficiently, which can lead to heart failure. Yearly, around 7000 people the Netherlands die because of this. For patients at the moment the only options are medication or invasive surgery such as a heart transplant or a pacemaker. Recovery of the damaged heart tissue is not possible. What if we could replace non-functional cardiac cells by new ones?

Cardiologist Roberto Bolli (Head Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Louisville, Kentucky) is a pioneer in this field. He works with so called stem cells. These cells did not specialize into one of the bodies cell types, they did not undergo differentiation and can still become any type of cell. By using the patients own cardiac stem cells prof. Bolli manages to repair the dead heart tissue.

In his lecture he will explain what stem cells are and how they grow? What is already possible in the hospital? How are his patients faring? Can stem cell therapy soon be expected to be a regular treatment? Technical and medical scientists are working together to make progress in this direction. And perhaps stem cells will also offer possibilities to treat other diseases that can also be characterized by the loss of functional cells, such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease?

This lecture is part of a national lecture series organized by BioMedical Materials program 'As good as new'. More information on www.sg.uu.nl