Scientists Find Heart Stem Cells
Date: 8.7.2009
Scientists have identified a **cardiac stem cell** that gives rise to all of the major cell types in the **human heart**. The find opens the way to using patients' own cells to heal their damaged hearts.
The cells in question express a **protein**, called Islet 1, which is present in the early stages of fetal **heart formation**. In recent years, scientists have identified the cells in embryonic mouse hearts. And now, a team in the laboratory of Kenneth Chien, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, has found the same **cell type** in human fetal hearts.
"ScienceNOW":[ http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/702/1]
