Targeting Oxidative Stress to Provoke Greater Tissue Maintenance and Regeneration in the Aging Heart

The heart is one of the least regenerative organs, and what limited ability it has to recover from injury is further diminished by age. This is of particular concern in the context of recovery from a heart attack, which leaves regions of scar tissue rather than functional tissue, weakening the heart. The best approach to this problem is to prevent heart attacks from occurring in the first place, which would have to be achieved by in some way halting and reversing the underlying processes of atherosclerosis and the growth of fatty lesions in the vasculature. There is enthusiasm for this goal in academia and industry, at least in principle, but very little concrete progress in departing from the futile focus on lowering LDL-cholesterol in the bloodstream, which can only modestly slow the progression of atherosclerosis, not reverse it. Thus, a sizable fraction of the regenerative medicine community is interested in finding ways to provoke greater regeneration in heart tissue, largely with the primary goal of helping heart attack survivors to regain at least some lost function. Today's open access paper is a discussion of the role of oxidative stress and cellular senescence in the age-related loss of regenerative capacity in heart tissue, with particular attention given to the function of progenitor cells in the heart responsible for regeneration. Researchers are looking for ways to reprogram the behavior of these cells, to reduce the impact of senescence, and it may be th...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs