Serena Hirani

Techniques to induce cardiac regeneration post myocardial infarction

Started Feb. 25, 2022

Abstract or project description

Myocardial infarctions cause major death of cardiomyocytes, the main cardiac muscle cells responsible for controlling the beating of the heart and enabling the heart to pump blood. Due to the extremely low turnover rate or cardiomyocytes, after myocardial infarction the heart never fully repairs itself. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR), a DNA detection and editing system found in prokaryotes, has been a major subject of cardiac research in recent years, along with practical usage of induced pluripotent stem cells. The regenerative potential of CRISPR and Cardiac Stem Cells (CSCs) to induce cardiac regeneration have been examined in numerous papers and has been seen to affect the heart in two main ways: reprogramming cardiac fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes, and inducing cardiac progenitor cells to proliferate into cardiomyocytes. These techniques have shown promising preliminary results, but have so far been through primarily basic and translational research. There are still many technical and ethical concerns that must be dealt with before proceeding to further clinical research for cardiac regeneration.