"Cardiac fibroblasts" refers to cells in the heart that play a crucial role in maintaining the structure and function of the heart. They provide support, regulate the formation of scar tissue, and help with the healing process after an injury to the heart.
Full definition
To find out, Deb and his co-authors genetically tagged
cardiac fibroblasts in mice and watched as they transitioned into bone - forming, osteoblast - like cells after heart injury.
The Company's first program is employing a genetic vector (gene therapy) to introduce specific genes to directly
reprogram cardiac fibroblasts into beating cardiomyocytes.
Embryonic cardiac fibroblasts promote myocyte proliferation, while adult fibroblasts promote myocyte hypertrophy,» said Masaki Ieda, MD, PhD, Gladstone postdoctoral fellow and lead author on the study.
«We are now trying to make
adult cardiac fibroblasts more like their embryonic counterparts to induce cardiomyocyte proliferation in the adult.»
Discovered that a combination of transcription factors (GATA4, TBX5, MEF2C) could reprogram
cardiac fibroblasts into new induced cardiomyocytes in vivo, resulting in improved cardiac function after cardiac injury in mice.
Their best lead for a drug target was a protein called ENPP1 that seemed to be overexpressed by the heart, and specifically
by cardiac fibroblasts, in response to injury.
and given the strong association between tissue injury, fibrosis, and calcification, we hypothesized that maybe it is cardiac fibroblasts [cells that give rise to scar tissue after injury] that are contributing to the calcification process.»
Here, we employed 3 different mouse lineage - tracing models and stage - specific gene profiling to phenotypically analyze and classify
resident cardiac fibroblast dynamics during myocardial infarction injury and stable scar formation.
«We've always suspected that different cell types are involved in determining how a heart is built,» said GICD Director and senior author Deepak Srivastava, MD. «Our research showed that the signals from
cardiac fibroblasts contribute to the different responses of cardiomyocytes.»
His research involves understanding the role
of cardiac fibroblasts in the progressive development of cardiac fibrosis following a myocardial infarction.
Furthermore, they found that fibronectin, collagen and a heparin - binding EGF - like growth factor are secreted specifically by the embryonic
cardiac fibroblasts as signals to promote this cell division.
The researchers transplanted
the cardiac fibroblasts isolated from the region of calcification under the skin of healthy mice and observed soft - tissue calcification similar to that seen in the donor mice.
Recent faithful genetic lineage — tracing studies revealed that during development,
the cardiac fibroblasts are derived from the epicardium and the endothelium, whereas in the adult heart, they constitute the cardiac injury — responsive resident fibroblast.
It has been suggested that
cardiac fibroblasts, which are cells that surround the muscle cells and make up over half of the heart cells, might be important in embryogenesis, but little is known about their development and roles in the embryonic heart.
By observing the cells in this system, they found that the embryonic
cardiac fibroblasts promoted cell division by the cardiomyocytes more efficiently than adult cardiac fibroblasts.