Benoit Bruneau
J David Gladstone Institutes
Status: Active

Public Abstract (provided by applicant)

Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the civilized world, and as populations age, this trend will increase dramatically. Currently the only way to treat failing hearts is with expensive and relatively ineffective drugs, or by heart transplantation. Ideally, we would like to be able to regenerate sick or dead heart tissue. The best strategy would be to make new heart cells that match the patients' cells (to avoid rejection), and inject them into diseased heart so that they could regenerate the sick heart.Unfortunately, current strategies that are planned to do so are ineffectual. We wish to attempt to generate heart cells from human embryonic stem cells, or skin-derived "induced pluripotent cells" by "reprogramming" the stem cells into heart cells. This would be accomplished by turning on heart genes that normally are off in stem cells and seeing if this turns stem cells into heart cells. If this approach is successful, these newly generated stem cells could be used for regenerative therapies in the future.

Statement of Benefit to California (provided by applicant)

Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in the civilized world, and as populations age, this trend will increase dramatically. Currently the only way to treat failing hearts is with expensive and relatively ineffective drugs, or by heart transplantation. Ideally, we would like to be able to regenerate sick or dead heart tissue. The best strategy would be to make new heart cells that match the patients' cells (to avoid rejection), and inject them into diseased heart so that they could regenerate the sick heart.Unfortunately, current strategies that are planned to do so are ineffectual. We wish to attempt to generate heart cells from human embryonic stem cells, or skin-derived "induced pluripotent cells" by "reprogramming" the stem cells into heart cells. This would be accomplished by turning on heart genes that normally are off in stem cells and seeing if this turns stem cells into heart cells. If this approach is successful, these newly generated stem cells could be used for regenerative therapies in the future.