Fibroblast reprogramming to cardiomyocytes

Patent Pending Cell-based in vivo therapies may provide a transformative approach to augment vascular and muscle growth and to prevent non-contractile scar formation by delivering transcription factors[101] or microRNAs[14] to the heart.[165] Cardiac fibroblasts, which represent 50% of the cells in the mammalian heart, can be reprogrammed into cardiomyocyte-like cells in vivo by local delivery of cardiac core transcription factors ( GATA4, MEF2C, TBX5 and for improved reprogramming plus ESRRG, MESP1, Myocardin and ZFPM2) after coronary ligation.[101][166] These results implicated therapies that can directly remuscularize the heart without cell transplantation. However, the efficiency of such reprogramming turned out to be very low and the phenotype of received cardiomyocyte-like cells does not resemble those of a mature normal cardiomyocyte.