Chemical-induced cardiac reprogramming in vivo

摘要

Dear Editor, Loss or dysfunction of cardiomyocytes lead to heart failure which is a leading cause of death worldwide.1 It is widely known that the hearts of adult mammals have a very limited regeneration capacity.2 A number of cell transplantation strategies have been proposed to restore cardiac functions,including the transplantation of primary cardiac progenitor cells (CPCs),or pluripotent stem cellderived CPC-like,or cardiomyocyte-like cells.2 However,the former approach suffers from the limited availability of cell sources and the latter has yet to overcome the differentiation efficiency,immune compatibility and possible tumorigenesis problems.3 Functional cardiomyocytes could also be generated by direct reprogrammingof non-muscle cells with forced expression of cardiac transcription factors or microRNAs.4 More interestingly,cardiomyocytes could be induced from non-myocytes in the heart in vivo by local delivery of transcription factors Gata4,Mef2c,and Tbx5 after coronary ligation.5 However,viral vector-carried transcription factors are still not favorable in therapeutic applications.6