New gene therapy shows promise for heart patients

The procedure was discussed at Cornell Medical Center Monday

In this story:

• Blood for oxygen-starved tissue
• Therapy saves woman's leg
• Related stories and sites

January 5, 1998
Web posted at: 11:25 p.m. EST (0425 GMT)

From Medical Correspondent Rhonda Rowland

(CNN) -- Medical researchers announced Monday the development of a new technique that could enable those with heart problems to avoid angioplasty and heart-bypass surgery.

Doctors at Cornell Medical Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have, for the first time, injected a gene directly into the heart of a patient with ischemia, or reduced blood flow to the heart.

"To the patient, it means we can get blood to oxygen-starved heart tissue," said Dr. Ronald Crystal of Cornell Medical Center. "And that, for the hundreds of thousands of individuals who suffer from coronary artery disease, could be a real advance."

Ordinarily, a patient with ischemia would have surgery to open the blocked artery or create a bypass around it.

CNN's Rhonda Rowland reports

With gene therapy, however, the new gene is supposed to "instruct" the heart to detour around blocked arteries by triggering the growth of new blood vessels.

"We know from animal studies that it's spectacularly successful," Crystal said. "We expect it to be true in humans, but we won't know that for several months."

Although this is the first time gene therapy has been used in the heart, two research teams have previously used it to treat blockages in the leg.

Therapy saves woman's leg

Dr. Jeffrey Isner of St. Elizabeth's Medical Center near Boston used a gene therapy technique similar to the one at Cornell in an attempt to save a woman's left leg. She had already lost her right leg to atherosclerosis.

"She was not getting enough blood flow down to the lower part of her leg and as a result developed gangrene in her foot," Isner said.

The experiment worked, and the therapy has been used in 21 patients and been successful in about three-quarters of them.

Doctors predict that gene therapy may one day be used along with -- or instead of -- bypass surgery and angioplasty. But it may be years before the technique can be used on a routine basis in patients with heart and blood vessel disease.

Related stories:

• Study: Low cholesterol is not enough to prevent stroke - December 30, 1997
• Study: Angioplasty may be better than drugs for heart attacks - December 16, 1997
• Study: Parents appear to pass on heart-disease risk - December 2, 1997
• Studies debate role of homocysteine in heart disease - October 27, 1997

Related site:

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• American Heart Association

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