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Human fibroblasts reprogrammed into cardiomyocyte-like cells. Immunofluorescence shows different molecules: DNA (blue), cardiac Troponin T (orange), and αActinin (green). Credit: Qian Lab, UNC School of Medicine ******************************************************************* According to research led by Li Qian, Ph.D., at the UNC School of Medicine, a protein that aids in the development of neurons also functions to reprogram scar tissue cells into heart muscle cells. Researchers at the University of North Carolin School of Medicine have made important strides in the exciting fields of cellular reprogramming and organ regeneration, and their findings might have a major impact on the development of future treatments for...

"IT'S amazing, absolutely beautiful," says Doris Taylor, describing the latest addition to an array of tiny thumping hearts that sit in her lab, hooked up to an artificial blood supply. The rat hearts beat just as if there were inside a live animal, but even more remarkable is how each one has been made: by coating the stripped-down "scaffolding" of one rat's heart with tissue grown from another rat's stem cells. Taylor, a stem cell scientist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, now wants to repeat the achievement on a much larger scale, by "decellularising" hearts, livers and other...