Room N231 Abstracts 23734–23527 23734 Use of Cardiac Stem Cells for the Treatment of Heart Failure: Translation from Bench to the Clinical Setting Roberto Bolli, Atul R Chugh, Univ of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Domenico D'Amario, Harvard Med Sch, Boston, MA; Marcus F Stoddard, Sohail Ikram, Stephen G Wagner, Garth M Beache, Univ of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Annarosa Leri, Harvard Med Sch, Boston, MA; Toru Hosoda, Harvard Med Sch, Boston, KY; John H Loughran, Univ of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Polina Goihberg, Claudia Fiorini, Harvard Med Sch, Boston, MA; Naresh K Solankhi, Ibrahim Fahsah, Arka Chatterjee, Julius B Elmore, D. G Rokosh, Mark S Slaughter, Univ of Louisville, Louisville, KY; Jan Kajstura, Piero Anversa; Harvard Med Sch, Boston, MA Extensive preclinical studies have documented the presence in the adult heart of cardiac stem cells (CSCs) that express c-kit and are clonogenic, self-renewing, and multipotent. CSCs have been shown to improve postinfarction LV dysfunction in animal models, but their efficacy in humans has not been evaluated. In August 2008, we obtained FDA approval to begin SCIPIO ( S tem C ell I nfusion in P atients with I schemic Cardi O myopathy). SCIPIO is a phase I, randomized, single-center, open-label trial of CSCs in patients with postinfarction LV dysfunction (EF 40%) who undergo CABG surgery. Autologous CSCs are isolated from the right atrial appendage (harvested during CABG), expanded, and re-infused intracoronarily 4 months after CABG; patients are followed for 2 years. We report here the initial results at 4 months after treatment in the first 8 CSC-treated patients. Of these, one was excluded (aortic stenosis), and in another one echo images were inadequate. In the remaining 6 CSC-treated patients, LVEF (3D echo) increased markedly from 32.4±2.3% before CSC infusion to 43.3±3.3% 4 months later (P=0.017) (Figure). This was associated with a significant improvement in …