The prevailing scientific dogma has long held that the heart is a terminally differentiated organ, meaning it was the heart cells are incapable of self-renewal. Discoveries within the last two years have proven that the heart contains its own stem cells. These cells are believed to compensate for normal everyday wear-and-tear, but do not suffice to offset devastating injuries such as heart attacks.

Capricor’s proprietary technology is based upon the work of its principal founder Dr. Eduardo Marbán, Director of the Heart Institute at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. Capricor has exclusively licensed definitive technology to harvest these cells from human heart biopsies and clinically manufacture an autologous heart stem cell therapy.

The technology is conceptually simple and elegant. Biopsies are obtained with a safe and routine 15-minute catheter-based outpatient procedure and the patient’s heart stem cells obtained.

The cardiac stem cells are then extracted out of the tissue and expanded in number and reintroduced into the same patient’s injured heart.

The leading problem for all cell therapy is that cells from another person or animal will not match the patient’s cells perfectly. This is crucial in cell therapy where therapeutic stem cells have to interact precisely with the organ to bring about any benefit. Non-matching cells are rejected by the patient’s own immune system causing the therapy to fail sometimes causing additional harm. Capricor’s autologous cell therapy model however provides patients with unparallel safety. Since cells are the patient’s own, they provide the ultimate match with no chance of rejection.

The second issue in cell treatments is to insure that the cells are indeed functioning, as they should and going where they should. Capricor’s autologous Heart cell therapy derives from the patient’s heart itself. Unlike cells that are very far removed in their lineage from heart cells, Capricor’s stem cells are already primed to support heart repair.

Preclinical studies preformed by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Rome demonstrate that Capricor’s cardiac stem cells, when re-implanted into injured animal hearts, improve heart function and grow new, healthy heart tissue. In patients with ischemic heart disease, either from a heart attack or heart failure, a similar procedure would regenerate damaged heart muscle and improve functional capacity of the heart.