New York, Oct 16 (IANS) Some scar-forming cells in the
heart have the ability to become cells that form blood vessels required
to boosts the heart's ability to heal after an injury, found an
Indian-origin researcher, suggesting a new approach to treat heart
attack.
The team of researchers he led also found that a drug
could enhance this phenomenon - turning the scar-forming cells in the
heart, known as fibroblasts to endothelial cells that form blood vessels
- and improve the repair process after a heart attack.
"Our
findings suggest the possibility of coaxing scar-forming cells in the
heart to change their identity into blood vessel-forming cells, which
could potentially be a useful approach for better heart repair," said
the study's senior author Arjun Deb, associate professor of medicine at
the University of California-Los Angeles in the US.
"It is well
known that increasing the number of blood vessels in the injured heart
following a heart attack improves its ability to heal," Deb added.
Through
experiments on mice in which scar-forming cells in the heart were
genetically labelled, the researchers discovered that many of the
fibroblasts in the heart's injured region changed into endothelial
cells.
This process contributed directly to blood vessel
formation - a phenomenon they called mesenchymal-endothelial transition
or MEndoT.
The researchers also identified a molecular mechanism
that regulated MEndoT and found that administering a small molecule to
augment MEndoT led to less scarring and allowed the heart to heal more
completely.
The study appeared in the journal Nature.