Researchers find key to recovery … – La Rioja

A group of researchers at the Salk Institute in California, which has helped the hospital Clínic de Barcelona, ​​has managed to heal and regenerate infarcted hearts of mice by reactivating the molecular machinery present in heart cells. The finding, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, may help to discover new therapies for the treatment of various heart diseases by blocking four molecules that are capable of inhibiting programs for organ regeneration.

The Most

as 50

These new results suggest that although adult mammals are unable to regenerate, as a rule, damaged tissues, they may retain a latent ability that is present during embryonic development, just as they do lower organisms in the evolutionary scale. “The regeneration of organs is a fascinating process that recapitulates the processes observed during development. However, the mechanisms that prevent organ regeneration in adult mammals remain unclear, “said Juan Carlos Izpisúa professor Gene eExpression Laboratory at the Salk Institute and senior author of the study. His group has long been trying to find out what the machinery that defines the development of an individual to understand which elements that control and trigger the regeneration in organisms that are capable of carrying out this process are such as zebrafish.

The Salk Institute team decided to focus on the study of microRNAs, short fragments of RNA control the expression of many genes. By screening for those that exhibited changes of expression during heart regeneration in zebrafish and that are conserved in the mammalian genome, found four molecules. These microRNAs were severely repressed during heart regeneration in zebrafish and present in the hearts of rats, mice and humans.

In studies with cell lines and mice that had caused them harm in the heart was observed that the levels of these RNA fragments were elevated in adult animals and not descend after injury. Thus, injected an adenovirus can infect blocking cardiac cells and observed the four microRNAs are caused regeneration of these cells with consequent improved physical and functional aspects of the heart.