Scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel) are developing a revolutionary drug that could give people a chance to avoid a heart attack. The Institute’s Cellular Microbiology Laboratory, led by Professor Eldad Tzahor, is developing a method for regenerating heart tissue. If the development is successful, a vaccine-like prophylactic will be created that will protect people from the effects of a heart attack for many years.
\nProfessor Tsakhor’s laboratory has already achieved some success. Scientists have learned to push the bodies of healthy rodents to activate a mechanism that helps these organisms cope with a heart attack in a few months.
\nThe use of this in medical practice is still a long way off. But the discoveries already made expand knowledge about restoring the function of the heart, and perhaps other organs, by intervening long before they are damaged. This discovery determines the direction of further research into the preventive treatment of the effects of a heart attack on heart tissue.
\nDuring the study, the researchers focused on genetically modified mice with increased expression of the ErbB2 gene, which stimulates cell division. Earlier it was found that increased expression of this gene promotes the division and renewal of adult myocardial cells. This ability is usually lost shortly after birth. One of the reasons for the devastating consequences of a heart attack is that a large number of myocardial cells die when the blood supply is disrupted and do not regenerate. This is the result of the development of chronic heart failure in humans.
\nShort-term activation of the ErbB2 gene in mice that have suffered a heart attack leads to regeneration of the affected tissues. However, side problems arise: increased expression of this gene disrupts the functioning of the heart, whose cells lose their ability to contract – they undergo a process of reverse differentiation (dedifferentiation), becoming less specialized, like the fetal heart. However, when the activation of this gene is completed, they differentiate again and the normal functioning of the mouse heart is restored.
\nTherefore, the scientists conducted an experiment on dosing of ErbB2 activation to improve heart function. It turned out that in those animals that underwent the gene activation procedure, the heart functioned better after a heart attack than in animals from the control group. Researchers from Prof. Tsahor’s laboratory are now testing a number of hypotheses about the delayed effect of temporary activation of the ErbB2 gene on heart recovery after a heart attack. It is possible that this gene triggers a chain of changes that increase the survival of myocardial cells in the conditions of oxygen deprivation characteristic of heart attacks and the destructive effect on heart tissue.
\nThe publication was prepared based on the material of the information website vesty.co.il.<\/p>\n
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