Heart failure took my husband. The treatment he believed in is now saving lives.

Patients find themselves unable to carry out simple tasks and it is a leading cause of death. Many people are told there is nothing more doctors can do to help them.

I have experienced first-hand how debilitating this illness is, not only for the patient, but for the whole family. 

More than 20 years ago my late husband was diagnosed with heart failure. Ian was so determined and would not accept the devastating diagnosis.

We met Professor Anthony Mathur, a cardiologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, who had an interest in stem cell therapy for heart failure patients.

Together we travelled to Germany where Ian was one of the first patients to undergo a groundbreaking procedure where stem cells are taken from the bone marrow in the hip and reinfused into the heart.

The results were outstanding and gave Ian back three years of an improved quality of life. Ian was able to climb stairs again and even went back to playing golf.

Ian was so angry that this treatment was not available in the UK and set about to raise the £6 million needed to fund the initial trials, and this is how the Heart Cells Foundation began.

Its aim to ensure this groundbreaking therapy is available to all.
Essentially, doctors remove stem cells from bone marrow in the hip (a straightforward procedure), Then they are sent to the laboratory to be processed, after which they are infused directly into the patient’s heart, via a vein in the wrist or groin, all on the same day (again, it is a minimally invasive procedure).

We have now completed Phase I and Phase II trials, which show extremely encouraging results. Around 70 per cent of patients show marked improvement and some have been saved from death.

Following trials, the treatment is made available to a small number of patients who have been told nothing can be done for them via a compassionate unit at Barts funded by the Heart Cells Foundation. Around 500 have been treated to date.

Many of our patients have become friends and members of the Heart Cells Foundation family.

Chloe Flevill, a 36-year-old NHS worker from Oldham, had been told there was nothing more doctors could do for her as her heart was failing due to a diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, which killed her older sister Anna at the age of two-and-a-half. Chloe had got to the point of being unable to walk up the stairs. She had an infusion of stem cells at Barts a year ago and says her life has been transformed.

One year on tests conducted in the last few weeks showed her heart’s ability to pump blood has returned to within one per cent of normal. Blood markers which indicate the severity of heart disease have also improved to an extraordinary extent.

As Chloe says: ‘These doctors are literally wizards. How can some cells that were inside my hip bone have had this effect on a disease that no-one is supposed to be able to treat?'

The Heart Cells Foundation is a UK based charity working over the last 20 years with Professor Mathur and the team at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Having supported three gold standard trials, the charity funds the only unique compassionate unit in the UK based at St Bartholomew’s.

Today, on World Heart Day, we celebrate the charity and the team at Barts under the guidance of Professor Mathur. They are the leaders in the field of regenerative medicine and have created one of the biggest breakthroughs in stem cell technology in the UK.

Our aim now is to ensure this treatment is rolled out across the NHS — something that could happen within five to ten years, following a bigger phase three trial. The cost of the treatment is currently £12,500 and this is funded by the Heart Cells Foundation.

To achieve this aim, we need the support of LBC listeners and readers. We receive no government funding, and depend entirely on donations. Please consider marking World Heart Day by supporting us at https://www.heartcellsfoundation.com/donate/

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Jennifer Rosenberg is Chair of UK charity Heart Cells Foundation.

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