Taiwanese scientists have discovered a silk-derived protein that can trigger the growth of pacemaker cells in the hearts of mice.
The study was published in last month’s issue of the scientific journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Lead author Hu Yu-feng (胡瑜峰), who is an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, said that the research points to technology that can compete with stem cells in the race to replace artificial cardiac pacemakers.
Photo: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Hydrogels prepared from silk fibroin were used in the mice trials and were extracted from natural silk supplied by the Council of Agriculture’s Miaoli research station, he said.
The substance, when injected into the inactive hearts of lab mice, triggers the expression of specific genes in muscle cells and transforms them into pacemaker cells, he said.
The simplicity, reliability and ease of implantation of the biomaterial technology makes it better than stem cell technology, he said.
Culturing pacemaker cells from stem cells is complex and unpredictable, and the cells, which must be injected into the heart, are often not absorbed by the organ, but travel in the bloodstream to other parts of the body, he said.
“If [non-functioning pacemaker cells] are a broken circuit board in a car, this [biomaterial] technology enables us to directly repair the circuit board without taking apart the car and ripping out all the wires,” he said.
The researchers have applied to patent the technology developed from the study in Taiwan and the US, he said.
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