Working with top Israeli researchers to harness the heart’s ability to repair itself

Investigating the niche-like microenvironment of the epicardium and its role in signalling to facilitate heart regeneration (Joint funding with BIRAX)

A heart attack can cause irreparable damage making the heart less able to pump blood around the body. This is called heart failure and it affects hundreds of thousands of people in the UK. In 2011 BHF Professor Paul Riley and his colleagues made an important breakthrough which offered hope of a way to repair the damaged heart. Professor Riley showed, in mice, how, after damage, adult heart tissue can be stimulated to repair itself by growing new heart muscle cells. He now hopes to learn how we can achieve the same results in people with damaged hearts. This project will allow Professor Riley to team up with researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. His expertise in the study of the outer layer of the heart, known as the epicardium, which has proven to be a source of cells that can help regenerate the heart will be allied with Professor Tzahor’s knowledge of the processes involved in growing large numbers of heart muscle cells. Together the researchers will be studying the area between our cells, known as the extracellular matrix (ECM). It consists of different molecules that help cells communicate with and support their neighbouring cells. The researchers want to understand how the ECM communicates with other cells to trigger repair. Understanding this communication may allow the researchers to find new ways to help the heart regenerate after damage. As well the ECM, Professors Riley and Tzahor will be looking at another way cells talk with each other called paracrine signalling. This form of communication involves individual cells giving out signals that can travel only the short distance to neighbouring cells and cause changes in those cells. They will be looking at the signals that can trigger changes that lead to repair.