Heart Regenerates After Infarction: First Trials With Mice
Friday, December 12, 2008 - 21:21
in Health & Medicine
Up until today, scientists assumed that the adult heart is unable to regenerate. Now, researchers from Germany have been able to show that this dogma no longer holds true. They demonstrated that the body's heart muscle stem cells generate new tissue and improve the pumping function of the heart considerably in adult mice, when they suppress the activity of a gene regulator known as beta-catenin in the nucleus of the heart cells.