Instead, a non-contractile fibrous scar forms to maintain structural integrity; compensatory hypertrophy is often inadequate to prevent eventual cardiac failure.

Most efforts have been directed toward cell-transplantation strategies. 1 Two recent studies 2,3 described the dynamics of cardiomyocyte renewal and identified ways to promote their regeneration ...

Cardiomyocytes are the major contractile cells of the heart. They form the muscular walls of the atrium and ventricle—two chambers at each side of the heart.

Researchers have unraveled potential mechanisms behind the healing power of extracellular vesicles and demonstrated their capacity to not only revive cells after a heart attack but keep cells ...

Each patch is a mixture of three cell types—4 million cardiomyocytes, or heart-muscle cells; 2 million endothelial cells, which are well-known to help cardiomyocytes survive and function in a ...

After incubating for two weeks, the researchers found immature but contractile heart muscle. Not just disparate cells stuck to bits of collagen. Electrically responsive heart tissue.

So when non-contractile scar tissue takes the place of one billion adult CMs after one MI episode, this impairs heart function, which, in turn, could even lead to a heart attack or heart failure.

Cardiac muscle cells generated from these stem cells were electrically quiescent, like adult heart muscle, but they contracted when given an electrical signal to mimic a natural pacemaker.

“Primary cells isolated from an actual heart from an animal survive maybe for two, three or four weeks if things go very well,” says Mathias Gautel at King’s College London.

Contractile proteins are proteins that mediate sliding of contractile fibres (contraction) of a cell’s cytoskeleton, and of cardiac and skeletal muscle. Heart and muscle contractile fibres ...

Researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle, have used human embryonic stem cell–derived cardiomyocytes (hESC-CMs) to restore heart function in macaque monkeys with heart failure.