Source: Stanford University Medical Center
Date: February 9, 2011
Summary:
STANFORD, Calif. — Using skin cells from young patients who have a severe genetic heart defect, Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have generated beating heart cells that carry the same genetic mutation. The newly created human heart cells — cardiomyocytes — allowed the researchers for the first time to examine and characterize the disorder at the cellular level.
In a study to be published online Feb. 9 in Nature, the investigators also report their identification of a promising drug to reverse the heart malfunction — for which there are currently no decent treatments — after using these newly created heart cells to check the effects of a plethora of compounds.
The new approach involved converting skin cells to heart cells in a dish by reprogramming them to an embryonic-stem-cell-like state, so that the cells are capable of "differentiating" into a multitude of cell types. The scientists then chemically coaxed these induced pluripotent stem cells to become heart cells. The iPS-cell approach represents a big advance because no good alternative methods for studying human heart malfunction at the cellular level now exist.
