Help for a scarred heart: Scarring cells turned to beating muscle

Poets and physicians know that a scarred heart cannot beat the way it used to, but the science of reprogramming cells offers hope—for the physical heart, at least.  

A team of University of Michigan biomedical engineers has turned cells common in scar tissue into colonies of beating heart cells. Their findings could advance the path toward regenerating tissue that's been damaged in a heart attack.  

Previous work in direct reprogramming, jumping straight from a cell type involved in scarring to heart muscle cells, has a low success rate. But Andrew Putnam, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and head of the Cell Signaling in Engineered Tissues Lab, thinks he knows at least one of the missing factors for better reprogramming.  

"Many reprogramming studies don't consider the environment that the cells are in—they don't consider anything other than the genes," he said. "The environment can dictate the expression of those genes."

The paper, entitled, "Matrix identity and tractional forces influence indirect cardiac reprogramming" is an open access article in Nature's Scientific Reports in December. This study was funded by the American Heart Association.


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