Over the course of evolution, the human heart has largely lost its ability to regenerate. Our distant ancestors were not afflicted by heart attacks - a condition that emerged primarily with modern lifestyles marked by poor diet, obesity, and other cardiovascular risk factors.
When a heart attack occurs, the healing process leads to the formation of fibrotic scar tissue. While this scar tissue helps stabilize the heart, too much scarring reduces the heart's pumping capacity as functional muscle cells are lost. Over time, this can lead to chronic heart failure or even cardiac arrest.
A cellular map points the way to better recovery after heart attack
Healing the heart is a highly coordinated process, relying on the precise interplay of many different cell types across both space and time. With their new molecular cell type atlas of the heart, the team has visualized these intricate dynamics in time and space after injury, revealing how cells interact as the heart attempts to repair itself.
Our cell atlas shows how various cell types communicate during heart repair and coordinate the healing process. It lays a critical foundation for future research aimed at reducing scar formation after a heart attack and maintaining the heart's pumping capacity."
Professor Dominic Grün, Chair of Computational Biology of Spatial Biomedical Systems and Director at the Institute for Systems Immunology, University of Würzburg
Using cutting-edge techniques like single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics, the team discovered that specific immune cells, called macrophages, guide connective tissue cells and help prevent overgrowth of scar tissue. "This insight opens exciting new possibilities to actively support heart healing, for example by targeting specific signaling pathways," says Dr. Andy Chan, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in Dominic Grün's group.
Collaborative Research Center 1425
The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Würzburg and the University Medical Center Freiburg as part of Collaborative Research Center 1425.
"Collaborative Research Center 1425 is focused on developing new approaches to diagnose and treat heart disease. Our goal is to harness the heart's natural repair processes to produce healthier scar tissue," explains Professor Peter Kohl. "The findings of this new study provide striking evidence of this approach in action." Peter Kohl, spokesperson for Collaborative Research Center 1425 at the University of Freiburg, and Dr. Franziska Schneider-Warme from the University Medical Center Freiburg, both played key roles in the study.
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