Editorial Kallikrein teams up with GSK-3b in heart

This editorial refers to ‘Tissue kallikrein promotes neovascularization and improves cardiac function by the Akt-glycogen synthase kinase-3b pathway ’ by Yu-Yu Yao et al.,6 pp. 354–364, this issue. With heart failure becoming an increasing burden due to the ageing population and improved peri-myocardial infarct (MI) survival, therapeutic approaches to stop or even revert this pathological process are gaining increasing attention. A most promising approach for the therapy is considered to rapidly increase blood supply to the damaged post-infarction ischaemic tissue in an attempt to limit cardiomyocyte death, thereby limiting scarring and its ensuing develop-ment of myocardial failure. Many experimental approaches have used growth factor induction, either as proteins or as DNA vectors, in an attempt to increase the local bloo