Thursday, August 02, 2012

Mending a Broken Heart -- With a Molecule That Turns Stem Cells Into Heart Cells

Source: Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute
Date: August 2, 2012

Summary:

Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), the Human BioMolecular Research Institute, and ChemRegen, Inc. have been searching for molecules that convert stem cells to heart cells for about eight years -- and now they've found one. Writing in the August 3 issue of Cell Stem Cell, the team describes how they sifted through a large collection of drug-like chemicals and uncovered ITD-1, a molecule that can be used to generate unlimited numbers of new heart cells from stem cells.