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

Lindsey Goff

Editor-in-Chief

Formerly immunologist for Cancer Research UK, Lindsey has since moved into the field of scientific publishing. She looks after all BPoD editorial matters.

• Image from Sian Harding's laboratory
• Faculty of Medicine, National Heart & Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK
• Image copyright held by Sian Harding