News Archives - 2008

October 27, 2008
A welcoming investiture for Douglas E. Vaughan, MD, Chair of Medicine, and investigator at Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute.

September 19, 2008
Dr. Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD delivers the 2008 Frances Feinberg Memorial Lecture at Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute.

May 12, 2008
Dr. Douglas Losordo, Director of Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute, discusses the prospects of autologous stem cell therapy for treatment of peripheral artery disease (PAD) in a recent edition of Endovascular Today.

March 31, 2008
Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute Teams Win 2nd and 3rd Place Prizes for Poster Presentations at the Fourth Annual Lewis Landsberg Research Day

Researchers from Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute won the 2nd and 3rd place prizes in the basic science competition at the Fourth Annual Lewis Landsberg Research Day, held on March 19, 2008 at Northwestern University.

Min Cheng, working under the direction of Dr. Gangjian Qin, won the 2nd Place Prize in the basic science competition for her poster entitled "Alpha4 Integrin Modulates the Functional Status of c-kit in Bone Marrow Stem Cell Niche".

	Click to view poster.
Min Cheng with Dr. L. Larry Jameson, Dean, Feinberg School of Medicine

Rongxu Wu and Mike Burke, working under the direction of Dr. Hossein Ardehali, won the 3rd Place Prize in the basic science competition for their poster entitled "Cytoprotective role of mitochondrial ATP-binding cassette protein-2".

	Click to view poster.
From left: Rongxu Wu, Mike Burke, Teja Naik, and Hossein Ardehali

Chicago Tribune
February 19, 2008
Artery Procedure Raises New Hopes

A new procedure launched at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in January offers hope to patients with critical limb ischemia (CLI), or severely blocked leg arteries.

Doctors transplanted a purified form of the patients' own stem cells into their leg muscles to grow new, small blood vessels and restore circulation in their legs. Two patients underwent the procedure. They are the first subjects in a 20-site national trial.

Without successful treatment, CLI patients have diminished blood flow, which causes wounds that don't heal and gangrene, which can lead to loss of toes, feet or legs. It results in more than 100,000 amputations a year.

"This is a dreadful disease, and the profession has failed to offer much in the way of relief for these patients," said Dr. Douglas Losordo, director of Northwestern University's Feinberg Cardiovascular Research Institute and principal national investigator for the trial. "Amputation rates are the same now as they were 30 years ago. We hope these trials will lead to treatment."  (Read More)

January 21, 2008
First U.S. Trial Transplants CD34+ Stem Cells to Investigate Prevention of Leg Amputations

CHICAGO — A Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researcher has launched the first U.S. trial in which a purified form of subjects' own adult stem cells was transplanted into their leg muscles with severely blocked arteries to try to grow new small blood vessels and restore circulation in their legs.

The first two subjects in the 20-site national trial recently underwent the stem cell transplant process at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Severely blocked arteries in the leg and sharply diminished blood flow can result in wounds that don't heal, the breakdown of tissue and gangrene. This painful condition is called critical limb ischemia (CLI) and results in the amputation of more than 100,000 limbs every year in the United States. It's a serious, emerging health problem that affects 1.4 million people. An estimated 15 percent of the population will have this disease by the time they reach age 70.

The Northwestern-led phase I/IIa study -- which will include 75 people with CLI around the country -- targets patients who have exhausted all other medical options including angioplasty, stents and bypass surgery to repair blocked circulation in their legs.

"They're at the end of the therapeutic road and they're ultimately facing potential amputation," said Douglas Losordo, M.D., the Eileen M. Foell Professor of Heart Research and principal national investigator for the study. "This is hopefully a way to help them avoid that."  (Read more)