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Cardiac regenerative medicine 2.0

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 209–211 (2013)Cite this article

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The key challenge in the field of molecular and cell-based therapies for heart regeneration is controlled delivery.

Over the past 50 years, cardiovascular therapeutics has rebooted many times. Hitting the reset button is a familiar habit for cardiologists, who have witnessed major disruptive and transformative advances in the physiological, surgical, device, small-molecule, recombinant-protein and antibody realms. Now, a new era of regenerative cardiology appears to be on the horizon, driven by a combination of fundamental advances in heart stem cell biology and insights from models of cardiogenesis and heart regeneration1. In a notable recent paper published in Nature, Eulalio et al.2 reported the identification of microRNAs (miRNAs) capable of promoting postnatal cardiomyocyte proliferation and stimulating cardiac regeneration. This and other3 studies that have implicated miRNA-dependent pathways in cardiac regenerative biology may lead to promising new therapies. Yet translation of such approaches to patients will likely require the development of technologies that enable appropriate delivery of therapeutics to the heart in a spatially and temporally restricted manner with minimal side effects.

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Figure 1: Effects of current molecular therapies when administered in the infarct regions of the murine heart.

Katie Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hao Wu and Kenneth R. Chien are in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Boon-Seng Soh, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.,

    Boon-Seng Soh, Hao Wu & Kenneth R Chien

  2. Department of Cell and Molecular Biology and Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Kenneth R Chien

Authors
  1. Boon-Seng Soh
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  2. Hao Wu
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  3. Kenneth R Chien
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kenneth R Chien.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Soh, BS., Wu, H. & Chien, K. Cardiac regenerative medicine 2.0. Nat Biotechnol 31, 209–211 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2524

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