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technion israel institute of technology

Human heart tissue generated from embryonic stem cells

Human heart tissue has for the first time been created in the laboratory. Generated from embryonic stem cells, the tissue could be used for testing and creating new drugs, for genetic studies, for tissue engineering and for studying the effects of various stresses on the heart. “Everyone imagines the possibilities of embryonic stem cells in repairing broken hearts, but stem cell technology offers even more — and it offers it much earlier,” said Dr. Lior Gepstein of the Technion Faculty of Medicine who headed the study. “Currently, we test drugs on animals, but we would get more reliable results if we tested them on the actual human tissues.”

New Parkinson’s drug found effective

A study conducted on 404 patients at several U.S. sites has determined that a new drug called Rasagiline effectively treats early-stage Parkinson’s disease. The study was reported in the December Archives of Neurology. “These findings are especially important since hopes for treating Parkinson’s with fetal cells were recently dashed,” said Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Professor Moussa Youdim, who developed Rasagiline with Prof. John Finberg of the Department of Pharmacology at the Technion.

Diabetic gene linked to heart disease

Heart disease is the most frequent, costly and severe complication of diabetes, affecting more than 70 percent of diabetic patients. There are geographic and ethnic differences in the risk of diabetic heart disease that cannot be fully explained by differences in conventional heart disease risk factors. Using a simple blood test, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have identified a gene that determines which diabetes patients are at greater risk for developing heart disease. Unlike other recent breakthroughs, such as the test for C-reactive protein, the test for this gene needs to be administered only once in a patient’s lifetime.