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Suffocating the heart to stimulate regeneration

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Ischaemic cardiomyopathy leads to destruction of cardiomyocytes beyond the regenerative potential of the adult human heart. The murine heart can regenerate in utero and shortly after birth, but oxidative stress eventually arrests cardiomyocyte division. Chronic hypoxia in mice has now been shown to induce the cell cycle in cardiomyocytes, resulting in cardiac regeneration.

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Figure 1: Reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced DNA damage in cardiomyocytes results in decreased proliferation rate after birth.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by NIH grants NIH HL119230 and HL117986.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Niranjana Natarajan and Richard T. Lee are at the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard University, 7 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.,

    Niranjana Natarajan & Richard T. Lee

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  1. Niranjana Natarajan
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  2. Richard T. Lee
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Correspondence to Richard T. Lee.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Natarajan, N., Lee, R. Suffocating the heart to stimulate regeneration. Nat Rev Cardiol 14, 7–8 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2016.197

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