Dissecting mechanisms of neonatal cardiac regeneration

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. After a heart attack, cardiac muscle dies, which progressively leads to organ dysfunction and heart failure. Current therapies focus on slowing disease progression but are not curative as they fail to restore the lost muscle. This thesis established and characterized an animal model of cardiac injury, where observe partial cardiac regeneration was observed, with restoration of cardiac muscle by division of cardiomyocytes, the contractile cells of the heart. This represents an important advance for cardiovascular research as it may contribute to the development of improved therapies. Moreover, an optimized protocol was developed to unequivocally quantify cardiomyocyte division. This protocol is now available to the scientific community and can be used by those willing to study activation of cardiac regenerative mechanisms and is expected to contribute to the identification of processes leading to the remuscularization of the heart after injury