Researchers and cardiologists of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and the Charité - University Medicine in Berlin showed that stem cells of the body to build muscle after a heart attack new tissue and improve function heart pumping materially. Catenin is controlled by the regeneration process of the switch-beta gene that regulates the development of the heart in the embryo. In experiments with mice could Zelarayán Dr. Laura show and Dr. Martin W.Bergmann that animals survive heart attacks better with them if you switch this gene is deleted.(PNAS, online December 10, 2008, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0808393105).

Cardiac stem cells from adult organism are activated especially after the damage to the heart, such as a stroke. Previously, researchers had thought impossible for the adult body can form new heart muscle tissue of a mammal sufficient to improve cardiac function.

In this process the gene for beta-catenin to pass a crucial role. The removal of this factor in the nucleus is the initial impulse which can occur both in heart development in the embryo and in adult cells of the heart muscle from heart progenitor cells. This allowed the researchers, the regeneration of the body, the heart of adult mice by deleting the regulator gene significantly enhanced beta-catenin, so that after four weeks, the pumping capacity of the heart of the animals was improved.

Important starting point of the project was a line of transgenic mice that had the research group of Prof. Walter Meier MDC Birch fact researchers. Dr. Bergman and his colleagues are convinced that these results open new approaches for possible regenerative therapies for heart failure.

Evidence of cardiac stem cells in the context of the experiments, the researchers were also able to demonstrate clearly that there are actually stem cells in the adult heart. So far, these cells were not clearly marked. They have succeeded for now by evidence of heart muscle protein-specific structural (alpha-myosin heavy chain) and a transcription factor from the heart of development (TBX5) in immature precursor cells."The evidence shows cells with these markers in the hearts of adult stem cells that survive by developing niches in the heart of the heart of adults," says Dr. Bergmann.

The work was done in collaboration with scientists from the Netherlands and Belgium.Therefore, Dr. Bergmann was the summer of this year, Fr Wilhelm Winterstein get prices. The research group of Dr. Bergmannn, who joined recently as Deputy Head of the Department of Cardiology, Asklepios Klinik St. Georg in Hamburg and scholars working at the MDC, is the research group of Prof. Rainer Dietz (MDC and the Charité). Under the leadership of Dr.
Zelarayán the Group carries out major projects for the importance of stem cells of the heart.