Utah biologists discover that tiny tropical fish’s “superpower” lies in an immune response to heart injuries.
A heart attack will leave a permanent scar on a human heart, yet other animals, including some fish and amphibians, can clear cardiac scar tissue and regrow damaged muscle as adults. (more…)
Researchers have made a major advance in efforts to regenerate damaged hearts. They discovered that transplanted heart muscle cells, grown from stem cells, electrically couple and beat in sync with the heart’s own mucle.
The grafts also reduced the incidence of arrhythmias (irregular heart rhythms) in a guinea pig model of myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack).
This finding from University of Washington-led research is reported in the Aug. 5 issue of Nature. (more…)
