Re-Growing Heart Tissue After Damage Reported July 23, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Heart tissue has been known to not have
the ability to re-grow, but researchers at Children's Hospital
Boston are working on ways to regenerate heart tissue after
damage. Researchers found after injecting animals with the
growth factor neuregulin1 (NRG1) following a heart attack, heart
regeneration increased and pumping function improved compared
with controls. The animals were injected once daily for 12 weeks
following a heart attack. Researchers were able to restart the
cell cycle with NRG1, stimulating cardiomyocytes to divide and
make copies of themselves even though they were not stem cells.
The mice who received NRG1 did not have the left-ventricular
dilation and cardiac hypertrophy, which are usually encountered
in heart failure. The researchers also stimulated production of
a cellular receptor for NRG1, known as ErB4, and found that
cardiomyocyte proliferation was further "NRG1 works when given
by systemic injection -- a