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Cardiac Regeneration in Model Organisms

  • Regenerative Medicine and Stem-cell Therapy (S Wu and P Hsieh, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Opinion statement

Myocardial infarction is the most common cause of cardiac injury in humans and results in acute loss of large numbers of myocardial cells. Unfortunately, the mammalian heart is unable to replenish the cells that are lost following a myocardial infarction and an eventual progression to heart failure can often occur as a result. Regenerative medicine based approaches are actively being developed; however, a complete blueprint on how mammalian hearts can regenerate is still missing. Knowledge gained from studying animal models, such as zebrafish, newt, and neonatal mice, that can naturally regenerate their hearts after injury have provided an understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in heart repair and regeneration. This research offers novel strategies to overcome the limited regenerative response observed in human patients.

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Acknowledgements

This work was done with the support of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (TG2-01168), and NIH (NHLBI).

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Conflict of Interest

Dr. Laurent Gamba, Dr. Michael Harrison, and Dr. Ching-Ling Lien each declare no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saban Research Institute and Heart Institute,Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, 4650 Sunset Blvd. MS#137, Los Angeles, CA, 90027, USA

    Laurent Gamba PhD, Michael Harrison PhD & Ching-Ling Lien PhD

  2. Department of Surgery and Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Ching-Ling Lien PhD

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  1. Laurent Gamba PhD
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  2. Michael Harrison PhD
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  3. Ching-Ling Lien PhD
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Correspondence to Ching-Ling Lien PhD.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Regenerative Medicine and Stem-cell Therapy

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Gamba, L., Harrison, M. & Lien, CL. Cardiac Regeneration in Model Organisms. Curr Treat Options Cardio Med 16, 288 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11936-013-0288-8

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