Thymosin beta4: take a month before a heart attack

Stem cells defeat heart attack!
Kirill Stasevich, Compulenta

Scientists have found a way to awaken heart stem cells, with which you can completely restore damaged heart muscle after a heart attack.

Time heals heart wounds — but, alas, only in a metaphorical sense. In reality, the recovery of a crippled muscle occurs extremely rarely, even if these injuries occur from romantic experiences, even from banal heart failure. The heart has a stock of stem cells that could theoretically replace the dead cells of the heart muscle and blood vessels, but these spare players are active only in the early stages of development, and with age they fall asleep.

Researchers from the Institute of Child Health at University College London have found a way to wake up sleeping heart stem cells. The logic of the scientists was simple: they knew that embryonic cells become cardiomyocytes if the Wt1 gene is active in them; on the other hand, in adult cells, this gene is silent.

To awaken Wt1, Paul Riley's group injected mice with the protein thymosin beta4, which was only known to affect cell structure and motility. Scientists injected thymosin beta4 into animals daily for a week, after which they simulated a heart attack in mice by reshaping one of the arteries that feed the heart. Rodents who received the mentioned protein were able to survive the brutal procedure. According to the data provided by the researchers in their article in the journal Nature, the Wt1 gene was activated two days after injection of thymosin beta4. The cells, which were originally located in the outer layers of the heart, migrated inside two weeks after the operation and grouped around the damage zone.

They changed their size and shape, looking more and more like full–fledged cardiomyocytes - about the same as in the picture below of Thomas Deerinck from the Science Photo Library.

With the help of the activating protein thymosin beta4, heart stem cells acquired the ability to sense where muscle cells had died, move there and heal the unusable area, intensively dividing and turning into muscle cells. The details of the activator protein have yet to be clarified, but researchers think that it acts epigenetically, modifying the DNA chain and thus "unzipping" the genes contained in it.

Scientists have already tried to heal damage in the heart with stem cells, but previous experiments were carried out with bone or connective tissue stem cells. Such cells could not turn into true cardiomyocytes and sooner or later stopped working. The cardioprotective properties of thymosin beta4 were also known, but it was believed that it simply increases the resistance of heart muscle cells to stress factors; it was suggested to be used in the first hours after a heart attack to protect the maximum number of cardiomyocytes.

Now, if the data obtained are correct, with the help of a simple course of treatment, you can not only save what is left of the heart after the attack, but also completely restore the dead areas of the heart muscle.

Prepared based on Nature News: Stem cells patch up 'broken' heart.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru14.06.2011