New Gene Therapy May Help Heart Attack Survivors

By Susan E. Matthews

Those lucky enough to have survived a heart attack often face an uphill battle — the trauma associated with the attack can often kill enough heart cells to leave survivors much weaker than before. But with a new personalized genetic approach, researchers may have found a way to reinvigorate the damaged cells, and even get them beating again./p>

Researchers from the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco found that injecting a therapy of genes into dead heart cells has promising implications for restarting the cells, based on studies done in mice and human cells in a lab. After receiving this therapy, most cells showed some signs of transformation, and 20 percent of them were up and working again, according to the study, published in Stem Cell Reports.