Mending a
broken heart—with a molecule that turns stem cells into heart cells
For years,
scientists have been looking for a good source of heart cells that can be used
to study cardiac function in the lab, or perhaps even to replace diseased or
damaged tissue in heart disease patients. To do this, many are looking to stem
cells. Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Human
BioMolecular Research Institute, and ChemRegen, Inc. have been searching for
molecules that convert stem cells to heart cells for about eight years—and now
they’ve found one. Writing in the August 3 issue of Cell Stem Cell, the team
describes how they sifted through a large collection of drug-like chemicals and
uncovered ITD-1, a molecule that can be used to generate unlimited numbers of
new heart cells from stem cells.
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