Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

Heart Muscle Can Regenerate Itself in Very Limited Amounts

June 25, 2014 By Shaun Mason, UCLA

UCLA researchers are first to directly measure division of cardiomyocytes

Researchers from UCLA’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research are the first to directly measure the division of heart muscle cells, proving that while such division is very rare, it does occur.

The study, conducted by assistant professor of cardiology Dr. Reza Ardehali and colleagues, resolves a recent controversy over whether the heart muscle has the power to regenerate itself. The findings are also important for future research that could lead to the regeneration of heart tissue to repair damage caused by disease or heart attack.

The findings were published May 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It was initially believed that heart muscle cells, or cardiomyocytes, were unable to replicate themselves and that their total number was firmly set at birth. However, research over the past two decades has indicated that these cardiac cells have limited proliferative activity, though there has been no clear agreement within the scientific community as to why and how much.

In part, the indirect methods used to measure this potential cell division have been difficult, and at times inaccurate, preventing a scientific consensus. Some groups of researchers used carbon dating to detect the age of cardiomyocytes in humans to determine whether they divided after initial fetal development, but the accuracy of this technique was debated. Others published theories that the heart muscle had a very high proliferative ability; recently, many of those papers were retracted because colleagues were unable to replicate the data.

Creating a Model for Direct Measurement
To address the problems of measurement, Ardehali and his colleagues pioneered a novel genetic approach called mosaic analysis with double markers, or MADAM, to directly measure for the first time heart cell division in a mouse model. They found that limited, lifelong symmetric division of cardiomyocytes, while rare, is evident in mice, but it diminishes significantly after the first month of life. No stem cells are involved in this process, the researchers said, and division of cardiomyocytes is limited to less than 1 percent per year.

The daughter cardiomyocytes that are the products of this rare cell division also divide, the researchers said, though very seldomly, which had not been shown before. The scientists found that the rate of cell division did not increase as a reparative response when myocardial infarction was induced in the mice.

“This is one of the most convincing and direct ways of showing that the heart has a very limited regenerative power,” Ardehali said. “This is a very exciting discovery because we hope to use this knowledge to eventually be able to regenerate heart tissue. The goal is to identify the molecular pathways involved in symmetric division of cardiomyocytes and use them to induce regeneration to replenish heart muscle tissue after disease or injury.”

The research was supported by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state’s stem cell research agency, The American Heart Association, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Stanford Medical Scholars program, and the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship.

Related Articles Read More >

A portrait of Dr. Philip Adamson
Expect more heart and lung failure years after COVID, Abbott’s heart failure CMO says
iRhythm stays silent on federal grand jury subpoenas
iRhythm stock soars on Street-beating Q1
A Medtronic HVAD pump opened up to show the inner workings
Medtronic investigates HVAD pump welds after patient deaths

DeviceTalks Weekly.

May 13, 2022
Our Pre-Post-DeviceTalks Boston episode, also MedtronicTalks replay with Gastro CMO Austin Chiang
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech