ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2012) — Scientists at the Gladstone Institutes just announced a research breakthrough in mice that one day may help doctors restore hearts damaged by heart attacks -- by converting scar-forming cardiac cells into beating heart muscle.
These scientists previously transformed such cells into cardiac muscle-like cells in petri dishes. But Gladstone postdoctoral scholar Li Qian, PhD, along with researchers in the laboratory of Deepak Srivastava, MD, has now accomplished this transformation in living animals -- and with even greater success. The results, which may have broad human-health implications, are described in the latest issue ofNature, available online April 18.
Cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death. Annually in the United States alone, the nearly 1 million Americans who survive a heart attack are left with failing hearts that can no longer beat at full capacity.
"The damage from a heart attack is typically permanent because heart-muscle cells -- deprived of oxygen during the attack -- die and scar tissue forms," said Dr. Srivastava, who directs cardiovascular and stem cell research at Gladstone, an independent and nonprofit biomedical-research institution. "But our experiments in mice are a proof of concept that we can reprogram non-beating cells directly into fully functional, beating heart cells -- offering an innovative and less invasive way to restore heart function after a heart attack."
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