Sorry for the pun. Bioheart, Inc is a biotech startup out of Sunrise, FL that specializes recovering dead heart tissue from adult stem cells. Bioheart now plans to offer 4.2 million shares at a price of $6 to $8 each (they previously had plans on a offer of $14 to $16 each). At the current price, the company would plan on making a much as $38.8 million, giving the company a value of $140 million. This is a bit slim for current standards.

Bioheart’s procedure is called MyoCell, a technique which harvest myoblasts (adult muscle stem cells) from a patient, and after a 21-day incubation period would inject them into dead myocardium (heart muscle tissue) causes by an MI/heart attack. A similar procedure was done on a small group of diabetic patients who received stem cells injected into their pancreas while made new insulin-producing beta-cells and helped with their disease (NOTE: Diabetes is more than a disease of insulin production, it also concerns the body’s non-response to insulin). On the face of it, the procedure seems like a great idea, but to date they have yet prove the procedure successful.

Repairing myocardium is not as simple as putting in new tissue. The heart is specifically designed to a certain width. By adding in new tissue one needs to ask a few crucial questions: what is to be done with the old heart tissue? will the heart just get thicker? Where will the new tissue reside? I am the first one to endorse Bioheart if their procedure is shown successful. I lost a grandmother (the only grandparent that I ever knew) to said dead myocardium. After bypass surgery, she was fine, but her old weak that had the dead myocardium could not stand the extra pressure created by the increased pressure created in the heart. Believe me, this technology is very personal to me and anyone who has a love one who have had an MI.

Bioheart to date has raided $51 million in fuding from Dan Marino Investments (the answer to your question is yes), Ascent/Meredith Asset Management, Getz Medical, Guidant, Tyco Ventures, Getz Bros., St. Jude Medical, Advent-Morro-Guayacan Private Equity Fund, Astri Group, Minnesota Bio-Med Partners, New World Angels, Presidential Capital Partners and other individuals. I can assure you that there are at least some people in that group put money into Bioheart not because they hope to make money, but rather they hope that this technology would work purely on humanitarian/personal resolve.