Baby’s life saved by surgeon who carried out world’s first surgery using stem cells from placentas

A heart surgeon,  Professor Massimo Caputo from the Bristol Heart Institute has stated he “saved the life” of a baby by carrying out a “world-first” operation using stem cells from placentas.

Professor Massimo Caputo used pioneering stem cell injections to correct baby Finley’s heart defect and says he now hopes to develop the technology so children born with congenital cardiac disease won’t need much surgical operations.

Finley was born with the main arteries in his heart positioned the wrong way round and at just four days old had his first open-heart surgery at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children

Unfortunately the surgery did not solve the issue and his heart function deteriorated significantly, with the left side of the heart suffering from a severe lack of blood flow.

His mother, Melissa, from Corsham, in Wiltshire, said: “We were prepared from the start that the odds of him surviving were not good.

“After 12 hours, Finley finally came out of surgery but he needed a heart and lung bypass machine to keep alive, and his heart function had deteriorated significantly.”

After weeks in intensive care it looked like there was no way to treat Finley’s condition and he was reliant on drugs to keep his heart going.

But a new procedure was tried, involving stem cells from a placenta bank.

Prof Caputo injected the cells directly into Finley’s heart in the hope they would help damaged blood vessels grow.

The so-called “allogeneic” cells were grown by scientists at the Royal Free Hospital in London, and millions of them were injected into Finley’s heart muscle.

Allogeneic cells have the ability to grow into tissue that is not rejected and in Finley’s case, have regenerated damaged heart muscle.

“We weaned him from all the drugs he was on, we weaned him from ventilation,” said Prof Caputo.

“He was discharged from ITU and is now a happy growing little boy.”

Finley is now aged two years.

Using a bio-printer, a stem cell scaffold is made to repair abnormalities to valves in blood vessels, and to mend holes between the two main pumping chambers of the heart.

In cardiac surgery, artificial tissue is normally used on babies for cardiac repairs, but it can fail and it does not grow with the heart, so as the children grow, they require more operations.

A child might therefore have to go through the same heart operation multiple times throughout its childhood but Prof Caputo and his team say the stem cell technology could save the UK government an estimated £30,000 for every operation no longer needed.

Dr Stephen Minger, an expert in stem cell biology and director of SLM Blue Skies Innovations Ltd said;

“Most studies that I am aware of in adults with heart dysfunction or failure show only minimal therapeutic benefit with stem cell infusion.

“I’m happy that the clinical team will go on to do a standard clinical trial which should tell us if this was a ‘one-off’ success and also give us some better understanding of mechanisms behind this.”

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