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A myocardial infarction (MI) can kill as many as 1 billion cardiomyocytes (CMs). Although the heart has some capacity to regenerate these cells following an MI, the number of new cells is very small. Nonetheless, the ability of at least some new cells to form suggests that a molecular switch might exist that could lead cardiac stem cells to differentiate into CMs, or trigger mature CMs to replicate themselves in sufficient numbers to compensate for cells lost during an MI.
Investigators screened hundreds of microRNAs (miRNAs) for their ability to cause regeneration of CMs. Two miRNAs profoundly boosted regeneration of mouse CMs in vitro. These miRNA genes were inserted into a viral vector used for gene therapy to treat adult mice with MIs in…