OBJECTIVES Neuregulin 1 signaling plays an important role in cardiac trabecular development, and in sustaining functional integrity in adult hearts. Treatment with neuregulin 1 enhances adult cardiomyocyte differentiation, survival and/or function in vitro and in vivo. It has also been suggested that recombinant neuregulin 1β1 (NRG1β1) induces cardiomyocyte proliferation in normal and injured a...

BACKGROUND Cardiomyocytes derived from human embryonic stem (hES) cells could be useful in restoring heart function after myocardial infarction or in heart failure. Here, we induced cardiomyocyte differentiation of hES cells by a novel method and compared their electrophysiological properties and coupling with those of primary human fetal cardiomyocytes. METHODS AND RESULTS hES cells were coc...

Teratogenicity can be predicted in vitro using the embryonic stem cell test (EST). The EST, which is based on the morphometric measurement of cardiomyocyte differentiation and cytotoxicity parameters, represents a scientifically validated method for the detection and classification of chemicals according to their teratogenic potency. Furthermore, an abbreviated protocol applying flow cytometry ...

RATIONALE Although bone marrow endothelial progenitor cell (EPC)-based therapies improve the symptoms in patients with ischemic heart disease, their limited plasticity and decreased function in patients with existing heart disease limit the full benefit of EPC therapy for cardiac regenerative medicine. OBJECTIVE We hypothesized that reprogramming mouse or human EPCs, or both, using small mole...

Previous studies from this group demonstrated that insulin gene enhancer binding protein ISL-1 (Islet-1) specifically induces the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into cardiomyocyte‑like cells through histone acetylation. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In the present study, the role of the histone acetylation and DNA methylation on the regulatory mechanism of...

Cardiomyoplasty represents a promising approach for the repair of the injured heart, but is hampered by the availability of appropriate cells. Mesenchymal stem cells derived from the human umbilical cord tissue (UCMSC) can be obtained in large amounts without medical intervention, exhibit self renewal and immunological naivity as well as multipotency. In the present study, different published p...

Interactions between the endoderm and mesoderm that mediate myocardial induction are difficult to study in vivo because of the small size of mammalian embryos at relevant stages. However, we and others have demonstrated that signals from endodermal cell lines can influence myocardial differentiation from both mouse and human embryoid bodies (EBs), and because of this, assays that utilize embryo...

The precise origins of myocardial progenitors and their subsequent contribution to the developing heart has been an area of considerable activity within the field of cardiovascular biology. How these progenitors are regulated and what signals are responsible for their development are, however, much less well understood. Clearly, not only is there a need to identify factors that regulate the tra...

AIM to speed up transdifferentiation of bone marrow-derived stem cells into cardiomyocyte in vitro by inducing dedifferentiation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell, before induction by 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine into cardiomyocyte. METHODS two-three months old 2.5 kg weight adult male New Zealanad Rabbits were anesthezied with ether, thigh bones were excised, and bone marrow cells were ...

Growth of the fetal heart involves cardiomyocyte enlargement, division, and maturation. Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is implicated in many aspects of growth and is likely to be important in developmental heart growth. IGF-1 stimulates the IGF-1 receptor (IGF1R) and downstream signaling pathways, including extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and phosphoinositol-3 kinase (PI3K). W...