When Cell Therapy isn't Enough: Building Cardiovascular Solutions in 2016

Guest speaker:
Doris A. Taylor
Director, Regenerative Medicine Research and
Director, Center for Cell and Organ Biotechnology
Texas Heart Institute

This event is free and open to the public.

Heart disease is the number-one killer of Americans, claiming 874,000 lives each year. Stem-cell therapy holds great promise for treating cardiovascular disease, but results to date have been disappointing. Outcomes are highly variable when patients are treated with their own bone marrow cells. A heart transplant is the last chance for men and women suffering from heart failure, but the number of available donor organs falls far short of the need.

At this event, Taylor will discuss improvements to stem-cell therapies and her additional focus on developing better treatments for heart disease, including building bio-artificial organs for transplant that use a patient’s own stem cells, thus avoiding the complications of organ rejection. 

The hope is that this research is an early step toward being able to grow a fully functional human heart in the laboratory. Taylor has demonstrated that the process works for other organs as well—opening a door in the field of organ transplantation.

For more information, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2016-doris-a-taylor-lecture.