Acid Repair

In the UK alone, more than 100,000 hospital admissions are due to heart attacks each year – that’s one every 5 minutes! Whilst 70% of patients survive today, their heart muscle remains damaged. Regenerative medicine, however, could help develop methods to repair damaged tissue by mimicking development. Retinoic acid (RA) is a crucial signalling molecule for heart development but can also play a protective role after myocardial infarction – aka a heart attack. By imitating a heart attack in mice, researchers discovered a striking enrichment of RA signalling (red) around the area subjected to the ‘heart attack’ – shown in the top of the heart pictured – and that many different cell types were responsive to RA (green). Without this essential signalling, the area damaged by a heart attack becomes bigger with increased cell death. RA clearly protects a damaged heart muscle, so could point to new ways to help those with heart disease.

Written by Sophie Arthur

Sophie Arthur

former Science Communications Officer MRC LMS

Formerly a stem cell biologist, Sophie has since moved into science communication working at the MRC LMS. She also writes an award winning science and education blog Soph talks science.

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• Image from work by Fabio Da Silva and colleagues
• Université Côte d'Azur, Inserm, CNRS, iBV, Nice, France
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, October 2021