The heart is one of the most important organs in our body, and given the increasingly disappointing statistics on the growth of cardiovascular diseases, the development of new treatments is extremely important. And recently, a group of researchers from Rutgers University took an important step towards “teaching the heart to heal itself,” which should reduce the number of surgeries and improve people's lives.
According to the editors of Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, the main principle is to take connective tissue cells from the human heart, "reverse engineer" them into heart stem cells, and then "convert" them into heart muscle cells. However, this is far from new and the real breakthrough of the team of scientists lies in the fact that the newly created cells of the heart muscle are independently connected to fully functional structures. Usually, heart cells made in the manner described above do not clump together or beat at the same frequency. To achieve this, the scientists used the CREG protein.
Although the study is still far from complete, we can already say that the method is quite promising. The CREG protein is able, scientists say, to create “as much tissue as needed” for patients to heal. And due to the fact that new cells are created on the basis of their own, there is no need to fear a transplant rejection reaction.
Vladimir Kuznetsov