Heart Regeneration
Research > Heart Regeneration
Until recently, researchers thought that the heart was a non-regenerating organ. They believed that scar tissue permanently replaced functioning heart muscle destroyed by disease.
Yet new data suggest that primitive stem cells may exist in the heart and can repair damage.
The heart's ability to repair itself is quite limited for the most common cardiac insults, such as myocardial infarction; however, there is hope that either adult or embryonic stem cell derivatives may be capable of repairing injured heart muscle.
Research in animal models of heart disease is revealing the possibility of cardiac regeneration through a variety of approaches and cell sources. In addition, pioneering clinical trials with adult stem cells derived from bone marrow are underway.
A diverse group of UW faculty members is working collaboratively to study the basic biology of cardiac regeneration, which will ultimately advance clinical trials for cell therapies targeted to the injured heart.
Faculty: Tim Kamp, Youngsook Lee, Gary Lyons, William Murphy, Brenda Ogle, Amish Raval, Kurt Saupe,