Heart Cell Editing

This is a human heart cell, but it doesn’t come from a heart. It was created in a laboratory from an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell. Because heart cells are difficult to obtain, researchers create iPS cells from other adult cell types – such as skin, blood or other easy-to-access tissues – and then direct the iPS cells to become whichever cell type they – in this case heart. By creating such cells from patients with cardiovascular diseases, scientists can examine disease mechanisms without needing actual heart material. Now researchers are taking the method a step further and combining iPS techniques with gene-editing technology – an approach that enables specific genes of interest to be mutated. By using gene editing within iPS cells (to disrupt genes related to heart function), then directing the cells to become heart cells, researchers can observe how specific mutations can send normal heart cell development awry.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

Writer

Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

Website

• Image courtesy of Joseph C. Wu, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
• Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, Stanford, CA, USA
• Image copyright held by the American Heart Association
• Research published in Circulation Research, May 2017