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Stem cells and muscle cells working together to repair damaged heart tissue

15 September 2019

Team Effort

Broken hearts don’t mend easily. During a heart attack, some areas can be deprived of oxygen and suffer permanent damage, leaving the heart less able to perform its essential functions. Currently, heart transplants are the only viable cure, but in an ideal world we’d be able to repair, rather than replace. Attempts to transplant restorative cells to lead repair have found limited success, as they don’t last long after insertion, but a new approach has tried transplanting supporting cells derived from stem cells along with the heart muscle material. The combination enabled the muscle cells to grow more reliably, and boosted their ability to contract and relax (right, in a section of tissue with both cell types, compared to heart muscles alone, left). The next step is understanding precisely how these cells support the regeneration, and ultimately step up from testing sections of heart in the lab, to treating patients.

Written by Anthony Lewis

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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