Stem cell success for Welsh company

A company based in Wales and cofounded by a Nobel laureate for medicine has told the BBC it has had "very positive" results for its stem cell therapy to regenerate heart tissue in patients with heart failure.

Cell Therapy said it hoped to develop new treatments for otherwise incurable heart disease within the next five years.

"We've finished our first clinical trial, which was focused on safety. The interim analysis looks very positive and very fortunately we've also seen some benefit - the study does show some signs of early regeneration"

Ajan Reginald, executive director, Cell Therapy Limited, talking to BBC Wales.

Professor Sir Martin Evans is cofounder and director of Cell Therapy and won the Nobel prize for medicine in 2007, for his pioneering work to identify embryonic stem cells for the very first time.

The company is basing its class of medicines on adult mesenchymal stem cells. Ajan Reginald, executive director, told the BBC that trial results concerned a cell type that "we think is a very potent type of stem cell which is heart specific".

"And what our therapy does is to produce more of those so that you have a large number of those cells to help you to regenerate the part of the heart that is damaged."