The loss of cardiomyocytes during injury and disease can result in heart failure and sudden death, while the adult heart has a limited capacity for endogenous regeneration and repair. Current stem cell-based regenerat...The loss of cardiomyocytes during injury and disease can result in heart failure and sudden death, while the adult heart has a limited capacity for endogenous regeneration and repair. Current stem cell-based regenerative medicine approaches modestly improve cardiomyocyte survival, but offer neglectable cardiomyogenesis. This has prompted the need for methodological developments that crease de novo cardiomyocytes. Current insights in cardiac development on the processes and regulatory mechanisms in embryonic cardiomyocyte differentiation provide a basis to therapeutically induce these pathways to generate new cardiomyocytes. Here, we discuss the current knowledge on embryonic cardiomyocyte differentiation and the implementation of this knowledge in state-ofthe-art protocols to the direct reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts into de novo cardiomyocytes in vitro and in vivo with an emphasis on micro RNA-mediated reprogramming. Additionally, we discuss current advances on state-of-theart targeted drug delivery systems that can be employed to deliver these micro RNAs to the damaged cardiac tissue. Together, the advances in our understanding of cardiac development, recent advances in micro RNAbased therapeutics, and innovative drug delivery systems, highlight exciting opportunities for effective therapies for myocardial infarction and heart failure.展开更多
文摘The loss of cardiomyocytes during injury and disease can result in heart failure and sudden death, while the adult heart has a limited capacity for endogenous regeneration and repair. Current stem cell-based regenerative medicine approaches modestly improve cardiomyocyte survival, but offer neglectable cardiomyogenesis. This has prompted the need for methodological developments that crease de novo cardiomyocytes. Current insights in cardiac development on the processes and regulatory mechanisms in embryonic cardiomyocyte differentiation provide a basis to therapeutically induce these pathways to generate new cardiomyocytes. Here, we discuss the current knowledge on embryonic cardiomyocyte differentiation and the implementation of this knowledge in state-ofthe-art protocols to the direct reprogramming of cardiac fibroblasts into de novo cardiomyocytes in vitro and in vivo with an emphasis on micro RNA-mediated reprogramming. Additionally, we discuss current advances on state-of-theart targeted drug delivery systems that can be employed to deliver these micro RNAs to the damaged cardiac tissue. Together, the advances in our understanding of cardiac development, recent advances in micro RNAbased therapeutics, and innovative drug delivery systems, highlight exciting opportunities for effective therapies for myocardial infarction and heart failure.