image: Regenerative medicine researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a cell that replenishes adult heart muscle by using a new cell lineage-tracing technique they devised. view more
Credit: UT Southwestern
DALLAS - June 22, 2015 - Regenerative medicine researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified a cell that replenishes adult heart muscle by using a new cell lineage-tracing technique they devised.
Adult heart muscle is comprised of cells called cardiomyocytes. Most cardiomyocytes don't replenish themselves after a heart attack or other significant heart muscle damage. The UT Southwestern researchers were able to devise a new cell-tracing technique, allowing them to detect cells that do replenish themselves after being damaged.
"We identified a cell that generates new heart muscle cells. This cell does not appear to be a stem cell, but rather a specialized cardiomyocyte, or heart muscle cell, that can divide, which the majority of cardiomyocytes cannot do," said Dr. Hesham Sadek, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and with the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine.
Previous research by UT Southwestern scientists revealed that it is the highly oxygenated environment of the heart that prevents most heart muscle cells from dividing. The researchers reasoned that the cells that do divide must, therefore, be low on oxygen, which is a condition called hypoxic. They then devised a technique to identify and trace the lineage of hypoxic cells. That technique led them to the identification of the proliferating cells within heart muscle.
"For decades, researchers have been trying to find the specialized cells that make new muscle cells in the adult heart, and we think that we have found that cell," said Dr. Sadek, senior author of the study, which appears online in Nature.
"Now we have a target to study. If we can expand this cell population, or make it divide more, then we can make new muscle cells. This is what this cell does naturally, and we can now work toward harnessing this ability to make new heart muscle when the heart has been damaged."
The researchers found hypoxic microenvironments with proliferating cells scattered throughout the heart muscle. They found the rate of formation of new cells to be between 0.3 percent and 1 percent annually.
"This is exciting work from both scientific and methodological standpoints," said Dr. Joseph Hill, Chief of the Division of Cardiology and Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern, who holds the James T. Willerson, M.D. Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Diseases and the Frank M. Ryburn, Jr. Chair in Heart Research. "Dr. Sadek's discovery points to a novel mechanism of cell-cycle control in cardiac myocytes and lends credence to the potential for regenerating - rebuilding - the diseased heart."
The new technique used to find the regenerative cells, a process called fate mapping, is an equally important development that may prove useful for distinguishing similar regenerating cells in other organs, as well as in cancers, the researchers said.
Traditional fate mapping, which is somewhat like developing a family tree for cells, labels cells based on the expression of a certain gene. That didn't work for the hypoxic cells, which are mainly regulated at the protein level rather than the gene-expression level. Instead, the researchers developed a sophisticated protein-tracking technique based on the presence of a hypoxia-responsive protein called Hif-1alpha. Researchers developed a genetically modified mouse in which the Hif-1alpha protein is fused to another protein, called Cre recombinase, which could then be used for cellular labeling.
"This fate-mapping approach, based on protein stabilization rather than gene expression, is an important tool for studying hypoxia in the whole organism. It can identify any hypoxic cell, not just cardiomyocytes, so this has broad implications for cellular turnover in any organ, and even in cancer," said Dr. Sadek, whose lab focuses on cardiac regeneration and stem cell metabolism.
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Other UT Southwestern researchers who contributed to the study are Dr. Wataru Kimura, Assistant Instructor in Internal Medicine; Dr. Feng Xiao, postdoctoral researcher; Dr. Diana C. Canseco, Assistant Instructor in Internal Medicine; Shalini Muralidhar, former postdoctoral researcher; Yezan Abdulrahman, postdoctoral fellow; SuWannee Thet, research associate; Helen M. Zhang, research assistant; Dr. Rui Chen, former Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine; Dr. Joseph A. Garcia, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine; John M. Shelton, senior research scientist; Dr. James A. Richardson, Professor of Pathology, Microbiology, and Plastic Surgery; Abdulrahman M. Ashour, research assistant; Dr. Asaithamby Aroumougame, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology; Hanquan Liang, computational biologist; Dr. Chao Xing, Associate Professor of Clinical Science; Dr. Zhigang Lu, research associate; and Dr. Cheng Cheng Zhang, Associate Professor of Physiology and Developmental Biology.
The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Foundation for Heart Failure Research, N.Y.
UT Southwestern's Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine was made possible by a $10 million endowment gift from the Hamon Charitable Foundation. The Center's goal is to understand the basic mechanisms for tissue and organ formation, and then to use that knowledge to regenerate, repair, and replace tissues damaged by aging and injury.
About UT Southwestern Medical Center
UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty includes many distinguished members, including six who have been awarded Nobel Prizes since 1985. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide medical care in 40 specialties to about 92,000 hospitalized patients and oversee approximately 2.1 million outpatient visits a year.
Journal
Nature