BHF launch their Mending Broken Hearts Appeal

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) have launched their £50 million Mending Broken Hearts Appeal with an interview with Professor Michael Schneider on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme

On 1st February 2011, the BHF launched their £50 million Mending Broken Hearts Appeal. At the moment, if your heart muscle is damaged by a heart attack, it can never fully recover. That is why the BHF intend to spend £50 million on funding groundbreaking research that could begin to literally 'mend broken hearts' in as little as ten years time.

News of the Appeal made headlines in lots of the day’s national papers, radio and TV bulletins and across the internet. In particular, BBC Radio 4 reported the news as part of the popular Today programme. Listeners heard from Imperial College's Chair of Regenerative Medicine, Professor Michael Schneider. He explained that there are at least four different ways in which stem cells can be used in regenerative medicine to repair damaged tissue. One of the ways is to inject the cells, and another is to build an organ or piece of an organ from the cells and implant that. It is also possible to stimulate the cells that are there already and a fourth way is to study the proteins or the hormone like proteins that the cells make and secrete, and use these as therapeutic products to promote wound healing and repair in the heart. 

Professor Schneider believes that the goal in regenerative medicine would be to have small molecules (drugs or proteins) that could be given to patients, that would instruct the cells that are there already to become more active and numerous, and to engage in a more productive programme of cardiac self repair.