Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD), also known as heart disease, refers to all the different types of heart or blood vessels problems and is the single leading cause of death in the U.S, resulting in the deaths of over 700,000 Americans each year.

The causes of cardiovascular disease range from structural defects to infection, inflammation, environment and genetics. It results in an increased risk for heart attack, stroke, high blood pressure, heart failure and arrhythmia.

The most common type of CVD is coronary artery disease, which is the leading cause of myocardial infarctions (heart attacks), affecting over 8 million Americans a year. Heart failure is the leading cause for hospitalization, and the demand for heart transplantation continues to vastly exceed the availability of donor hearts.

While there is an array of medications and other treatments for heart disease, none of them are cures, and the course of the disease is relentlessly progressive.

California Stem Cell (CSC) is in pre-clinical development of stem cell replacement strategies for repair of damaged heart muscle (due to infarctions) and pacemaker cells (which result in cardiac arrhythmia when dysfunctional). CSC currently intends efficacy studies to begin in the third quarter of 2008 and pre-clinical safety trials to begin in the first quarter of 2009.