• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
Monday, June 5, 2023
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Stem Cells

Molecular ‘cocktail’ transforms skin cells into beating heart cells

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
February 21, 2014
in Stem Cells
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

The power of regenerative medicine appears to have turned science fiction into scientific reality—by allowing scientists to transform skin cells into cells that closely resemble beating heart cells. However, the methods required are complex, and the transformation is often incomplete. But now, scientists at the Gladstone Institutes have devised a new method that allows for the more efficient—and, importantly, more complete—reprogramming of skin cells into cells that are virtually indistinguishable from heart muscle cells. These findings, based on animal models and described in the latest issue of Cell Reports, offer newfound optimism in the hunt for a way to regenerate muscle lost in a heart attack.

Molecular 'cocktail' transforms skin cells into beating heart cells

Heart disease is the world’s leading cause of death, but recent advances in science and medicine have improved the chances of surviving a heart attack. In the United States alone, nearly 1 million people have survived an attack, but are living with heart failure—a chronic condition in which the heart, having lost muscle during the attack, does not beat at full capacity. So, scientists have begun to look toward cellular reprogramming as a way to regenerate this damaged heart muscle.

The reprogramming of skin cells into heart cells, an approach pioneered by Gladstone Investigator, Deepak Srivastava, MD, has required the insertion of several genetic factors to spur the reprogramming process. However, scientists have recognized potential problems with scaling this gene-based method into successful therapies. So some experts, including Gladstone Senior Investigator Sheng Ding, PhD, have taken a somewhat different approach.

“Scientists have previously shown that the insertion of between four and seven genetic factors can result in a skin cell being directly reprogrammed into a beating heart cell,” explained Dr. Ding, the paper’s senior author and a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, with which Gladstone is affiliated. “But in my lab, we set out to see if we could perform a similar transformation by eliminating—or at least reducing—the reliance on this type of genetic manipulation.”

To that effect, the research team used skin cells extracted from adult mice to screen for chemical compounds, so-called ‘small molecules,’ that could replace the genetic factors. Dr. Ding and his research team have previously harnessed the power of small molecules to reprogram skin cells into neurons and, more recently, insulin-producing pancreas cells. They reasoned that a similar technique could be used to do the same with heart cells.

“After testing various combinations of small molecules, we narrowed down the list to a four-molecule ‘cocktail,’ which we called SPCF, that could guide the skin cells into becoming more like heart cells,” said Gladstone Postdoctoral Scholar Haixia Wang, PhD, the paper’s lead author. “These newly reprogramed cells exhibited some of the twitching and contracting normally seen in mature heart cells, but the transformation wasn’t entirely complete.”

So, Drs. Ding and Wang decided to add one genetic factor, called Oct4, to the small molecule cocktail. And by doing so, the research team was able to generate a completely reprogrammed beating heart cell.

“Once we added Oct4 to the mix, we observed clusters of contracting cells after a period of just 20 days,” explained Dr. Ding. “Remarkably, additional analysis revealed that these cells showed the same patterns of gene activation and electric signaling patterns normally seen in the ventricles of the heart.”

Dr. Ding and his team believe that these results may point to a more desirable method for reprogramming, as ventricular heart cells are the type of cells typically lost during a heart attack. These findings give the team newfound optimism that the research is well on its way towards an entirely pharmaceutical-based method to regrow heart muscle.

“The fact that the combination of Oct4 and small molecules appears to generate beating heart cells in an accelerated fashion is encouraging,” said Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, who was not involved in this study. “Future advances by Dr. Ding and others will likely focus on improving the efficiency of conversion as well as duplicating the data in adult human cells.”

Nan Cao, PhD, C. Ian Spencer, PhD, Boaming Nie, PhD, Tianhua Ma, PhD, Tao Xu, PhD, Yu Zhang, PhD, Xiaojing Wang, PhD, and Deepak Srivastava, MD, also participated in this research at Gladstone, which was supported by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Eye Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Roddenberry Foundation and the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation.

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Gladstone Institutes, Anne Holden.

Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Human stem cells treat spinal cord injury side effects in mice

October 4, 2016
blank

Research into fly development provides insights into blood vessel formation

September 30, 2016

Fertility genes required for sperm stem cells

September 28, 2016

Regulatory RNA essential to DNA damage response

September 27, 2016
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • plants

    Plants remove cancer causing toxins from air

    40 shares
    Share 16 Tweet 10
  • Element creation in the lab deepens understanding of surface explosions on neutron stars

    36 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • Deep sea surveys detect over five thousand new species in future mining hotspot

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9
  • How life and geology worked together to forge Earth’s nutrient rich crust

    35 shares
    Share 14 Tweet 9

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Phase 3 SWOG Cancer Research Network trial, led by a City of Hope researcher, demonstrates one-year progression-free survival in 94% of patients with Stage 3 or 4 classic Hodgkin lymphoma who received a checkpoint inhibitor combined with chemotherapy

The promise of novel FolRα-targeting antibody drug conjugate in recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer

Carbon-based stimuli-responsive nanomaterials: classification and application

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 50 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In