The 45th MTR Seminar " Regeneration therapy based on underlying mechanism of heart failure"

by Prof. Issei Komuro, Department of Cardiovascular Science and Medicine,Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine.(here)

 

     Date: 18:00-19:00, February 19, 2009

     Venue: Osaka University Hospital
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Cardiac hypertrophy occurs as a compensatory response to various stresses. However, collapse of the compensation causes heart failure.

Prof. Komuro and colleagues have clarified that the cardiac angiogenesis is crucially involved in the adaptive mechanism of cardiac hypertrophy and that an accumulation of tumor suppressor gene p53 is essential for the transition from cardiac hypertrophy to the heart failure (Sano, et al. Nature 2007)

 

They treated about 80 patients with peripheral arterial obstruction by angiogenesis therapy using peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and found effectiveness in over 70 percent of them. They are planning to apply the therapy to patients with cardiac failure.

 

In addition, they identified IGFBP-4 as a potent enhancer of cardiomyocyte differentiation (Zhu, et al., Nature, 2008). IGFBP-4 played a role indispensable to cardiomyocyte differentiation and even to cardiogenesis by down regulating wnt signal . The possibility of its promoting effect on cardiac regeneration is currently under investigation.