A shot against heart attacks?
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) scientists collaborating with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a “genome-editing” approach for permanently reducing cholesterol levels in mice through a single injection, a development that could reduce the risk of heart attacks in humans by 40 to 90 percent. “For the first iteration of an experiment, this was pretty remarkable,” said Kiran Musunuru of HSCI, an assistant professor in Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (SCRB), and a cardiologist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Musunuru stressed, however, that it could take a decade of concerted effort to get this new approach for fighting heart disease from the laboratory to phase I clinical trials in humans. The research was published online today by Circulation Research, a journal of the American Heart Association. Qiurong Ding, a postdoctoral fellow in Musunuru’s laboratory, is first author on the paper. The work by the Musunuru team and...