Using skin cells from a family with a cardiac disorder, researchers have generated heart cells that reveal some of the defects underlying the disease.
Joseph Wu and his colleagues at Stanford University in California took skin cells from family members with and without dilated cardiomyopathy, a common cause of heart failure, and reprogrammed them into stem cells. The authors then used cardiac growth factors to turn the stem cells into heart cells. Compared with cells derived from healthy individuals (pictured left), heart cells from patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (right) showed a decreased ability to contract and an abnormal distribution of a filament protein called α-actinin (shown in red), which has a key role in cell contraction.
Cells from the patients functioned better after being treated with a drug often given to cardiac patients.
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Patient-specific heart cells. Nature 484, 419 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/484419e
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/484419e
