Myocardial regeneration in a pre-clinical model of type 2 diabetes
Description: Diabetes is a disease where blood sugar is elevated over an extended period of time. Patients with diabetes are at a higher risk of suffering a heart attack which is a consequence of the blockage of heart blood vessels. This causes the death of heart muscle cells and small blood vessels and leads to scar formation that interferes with normal heart function and causes heart failure. The heart muscle cells cannot self-regenerate and one of the possible treatments for regeneration of the heart muscle is the transplantation of heart muscle cells obtained from the patient's own stem cells. Although many heart attack patients have diabetes, no studies have been done to evaluate treatment with stem cells in diabetic animals - which we propose to study here. We will test if treating patients with stem cells and small vessels obtained from adipose tissue will improve the survival of transplanted stem cells and improve heart function. Our work shows that it is possible to regenerate the heart in healthy rats that were surgically submitted to heart attack by also transplanting ready-made vessels. These ready-made vessels obtained from fat tissue re-establish the blood flow and promote the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to the muscle cells. However, for these therapies to work in the clinical setting, it is important to study them in more complex disease models as patients that have heart attacks usually have other health issues that likely caused or contributed to the heart attack in the first place. We propose to test if our strategy of co-implanting vessels with heart muscle cells from stem cells in diabetic animals that were surgically submitted to heart attack regenerates diabetic hearts. We will investigate how this will improve the survival of transplanted cells and the heart's ability to pump blood efficiently. This may provide new treatments for heart disease and improve the quality of life of patients suffering from heart attack and heart failure in the future.
Amount: CA$965,400
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project Grant
Start date: 2022-04-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Investigator: Sara Vasconcelos
Institution: University Health Network (Toronto)
Subfield: Genetics
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: 180641_1
OpenAlex ID: G197812615