New research from UVA Health scientists seeking to identify drugs to regenerate tissue after a heart attack is highlighting the promise of their approach.
The team, led by Jeff Saucerman, PhD, previously developed a method to identify drugs that might make new cardiomyocytes, the heart cells responsible for pumping blood. In their follow-up work, the researchers analyzed five of the 30 compounds they initially identified and determined how these compounds regenerate cardiomyocytes, which could help replace damaged heart tissue.
The scientists say this new understanding of the how the compounds work in heart cells will be invaluable in the development of the drugs to treat or reverse heart damage and heart failure, a potentially fatal condition that affects more than 5 million Americans.
“Once you lose cardiomyocytes after a heart attack and form a scar, there’s usually no going back. These compounds are promising in their potential of producing new cardiomyocytes to repopulate the heart,” said Saucerman, of the University of Virginia’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint program of the School of Medicine and School of Engineering. “I hope that this research provides biomedical researchers with new ideas of biochemical pathways and drugs that may one day enable regeneration of heart tissue in patients.”