Gene therapy that can stimulate cardiac repair
The study, published in Nature on 8 May, was performed in pigs and demonstrated that viral delivery of the human microribonucleic acid (miRNA)-199a stimulated cardiac repair in infarcted hearts.
After delivery of the therapeutic miRNA, post-infarction pig hearts demonstrated increased contractility, reduced scarring, and increased muscle mass. Subsequent to these marked improvements, many of the pigs in the study died due to sudden cardiac events.
