PHILADELPHIA, May 29 (UPI) -- U.S. heart researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College have used gene therapy to reverse heart failure in animals.
The scientists also report they have found such a gene therapy strategy has "unique and additive effects" to standard heart failure drugs called beta-blockers.
Researchers led by Walter Koch, director of the university's Center for Translational Medicine, used a virus to carry the gene for a protein, S100A1, into the heart cells of rats with heart failure. The researchers said they virus expressed the S100A1 gene only in heart cells and not in other organs, essentially making it a tailored therapy. After 18 weeks, those animals that received the gene therapy had significantly improved heart function compared with non-treated animals.
The researchers also discovered that the S100A1 gene therapy changed the geometry of the heart. In heart failure, the heart tends to increase in size. The added S100A1 slowed that process and actually reversed it. Koch said the added S100A1 appears to improve calcium signaling in heart cells, which is critical to the force of contraction of individual cells.
The study is reported in the journal Circulation.
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