Drug Discovery for Cardiovascular Regeneration
- Research on cardiac diseases with little or no effective treatments
- Discovery of factors that promote cardiovascular regeneration
- Development of myocardial remodeling drugs for clinical application
New regenerative medicine for severe cardiovascular diseases
Current treatments for severe heart failure include cardiac transplantation, implanted artificial hearts, myocardial regeneration therapy by cell transplantation, etc. Regarding heart transplants, patients must wait an extraordinarily long time due to the shortage of donors. Regarding artificial hearts, the devices suffer from limited durability and the risk of infection or thrombosis. In myocardial regeneration therapy, myoblasts and iPS cell-derived cardiomyocytes are transplanted, but the quality of the cells plus the time and cost to cultivate the transplanted cells limit this option.
Drugs, on the other hand, are less invasive and readily available at many facilities compared with the above treatment methods. In our lab, we aim to develop breakthrough regenerative therapeutic drugs that have cardioprotective effects. Our approach includes the use of microspheres and nanospheres, cardiac sheets to study the safety and efficacy of candidate drugs and exploration of clinical application.
