Repairing hearts with AKT

Adult cardiomyocytes—the contractile units of the heart—have little regenerative capacity, and their loss, following ischemic injury and other insults, leads to cardiac dysfunction and heart failure, a degenerative condition with a poorer prognosis than many cancers. Despite intense efforts, there are presently no effective treatments for heart failure besides heart transplantation, itself limited by the number of organ donors and immunosuppressive therapies. Cell therapy has emerged as an attractive option for heart repair following myocardial infarction, which often progresses to heart failure. Over the past decade, many clinical trials have tested the ability of a variety of exogenous progenitor cells at repairing ischemic and failing hearts, but with little success; in most cases, cells transferred to the heart were unable to generate new cardiomyocytes (1). Alternative strategies, including in situ generation of cardiomyocytes at the infarcted area or in vitro reprogramming of cells into cardiomyocytes for organ grafting, are being explored.