Newborn mice heal broken heart
15 Mar 2011 by Evoluted New Media
Move over zebrafish – newborn mammals can heal their hearts too say researchers in America.
Move over zebrafish – newborn mammals can heal their hearts too say researchers in America.
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Baby mice have the ability to repair their heart but ‘forget’ how to as they age |
Researchers at UT Southwester Medical Centre working with mice found that a portion of the heart removed during the first week after birth grew back wholly and correctly – as if nothing had happened.
“This is an important step in our search for a cure for heart disease, the number one killer in the developed world,” said Dr Hensham Sadek, assistant professor of internal medicine and senior author of the study.
“We found that the heart of newborn mammals can fix itself; it just forgets how as it gets older. The challenge now is to find a way to remind the adult heart how to fix itself again.”
The researchers found that within three weeks of removing 15% of the newborn mouse heart, the heart was able to completely grow back lost tissue and as a result looked and functioned like a normal heart.
Uninjured beating heart cells – cardiomyocytes – are a major source of new cells say the researchers who believe the cardiomyocytes stop beating long enough to divide and provide the heart with fresh cardiomyocytes.
“The inability of the adult heart to regenerate following injury represents a major barrier in cardiovascular medicine,” said co-senior author Dr Eric Olson. “This work demonstrates that cardiac regeneration is possible in the mammalian heart during a window of time after birth, but this regenerative medicine is the lost.”
Olson said armed with this knowledge, scientists can uncover methods to reawaken cardiac regeneration in adulthood. The next step is to study this brief window when the heart is still capable of regeneration and to find out how – and why – the heart turns off this remarkable ability to regenerate as it grows older.
