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A Picture of Health – Picturing Health At the Heart

Study of heart muscle cells in fine detail provides insight into heart disorders and clues for treatments

05 February 2023

At the Heart

Celebrated by a recent exhibition at its new building in White City, London, the MRC LMS has launched a book and website with over 100 interpretations of the phrase ‘A Picture of Health’ gathered from a broad cross-section of society.

As her Picture of Health, Emeritus Professor of Cardiac Pharmacology at Imperial College London Sian Harding, chose this image of a cardiac muscle cell. Read why:

‘’This is an image of a cardiac muscle cell stained to show the muscle striation pattern: its length is around the thickness of a human hair. I’ve been fascinated by the cardiomyocyte for more than 30 years. The structure is so beautiful, and their ability to beat in the culture dish for hours is amazing. Being able to study the individual cells gave us the ability to use many sophisticated imaging and molecular methods. Looking at the human cardiomyocyte from failing hearts provided a deep insight into the changes during heart failure and led to many discoveries. Now, we are able to produce cardiomyocytes from human stem cells, but it has proved elusive to reproduce this intricate structure completely.’’

Written by Lindsey Goff

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What is BPoD?

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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BPoD is also available in Catalan at www.bpod.cat with translations by the University of Valencia.