In the journal Circulation, the authors reveal an exciting new avenue of study for repairing damaged hearts.
Think of them as the Energizer Bunnies of the heart, tiny natural batteries that keep this vital organ beating 100,000 times a day as it pumps 2,000 gallons of blood throughout the human body.
But when those batteries – heart muscle cells called cardiomyocytes − short circuit and die, the damage can be devastating. The damage to the heart muscle is usually permanent, leaving the heart unable to pump the way it should.
That’s the subject of a new study by a team that includes two University of South Florida (USF) Health doctors who reported their findings in Circulation, the flagship journal of the American Heart Association.
“An injury like a heart attack creates a massive loss of cardiomyocytes, and you can’t renew them,’’ said Da-Zhi Wang, PhD, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine in the USF Health Heart Institute and Morsani College of Medicine. “So, the question is how to make the heart repair itself.’’
Advancements in Heart Regeneration Research
The study of heart repair has been a consistent theme of Dr. Wang’s research lab, which recently relocated to USF from Harvard Medical School where he was a professor working at Boston Children’s Hospital. Dr. Wang, now a professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology in the Morsani College of Medicine, is a senior author of the study, “Reduced Mitochondrial Protein Translation Promotes Cardiomyocyte Proliferation and Heart Regeneration.’’ The paper addresses how the activities of mitochondria, which reside inside cardiomyocyte cells, is vital in repairing a damaged heart and even in preventing future heart attacks or coronary disease.
“The key element of this study is the link to cardiac regeneration,’’ said John Mably, PhD, another author of the study. “If you want to have your heart functioning into your 90s, this will be of interest to you, or anyone who has heart disease or had a heart attack.’’
Dr. Mably is an associate professor of Internal Medicine in the Morsani College of Medicine and a member of the Center for Regenerative Medicine and USF Health Heart Institute. The USF Health team is supported by the USF Health Heart Institute in the Morsani College of Medicine and grants from the DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061192