#c-kit

cKit+ cells Do Make Heart Muscle After All

In the heart lies a population of cells that contains a protein called cKit, and are, therefore, called cKit+ cells. cKit+ cells have been the subject of a good deal of attention by researchers, but unfortunately, these have become the focus of a good deal of controversy. When cKit+ cells were first discovered, there was a good deal of excitement about them, since they seemed to be able to make…

Umbilical Cord Blood Contains c-kit+ Cells that Can Differentiate into Heart-like Cells

Bone contains a wide variety of stem cells whose potential are only beginning to be tapped. One cell population possesses a cell surface protein called c-kit, and these c-kit+ progenitor cells seem to support myocardial regeneration. Do c-kit+ cells from umbilical cord blood have the same capacity? Luciana Teofili from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome, Italy and her colleagues…

Stem Cell Factor Delivery into Heart Muscle After Heart Attack May Enhance Cardiac Repair and Reverse Injury

Stem Cell Factor or SCF is a small peptide that circulates throughout the bloodstream and eventually finds its way to the bone marrow where it summons bone marrow-based stem cells to the sight of injury for tissue repair purposes. Unfortunately, it takes injured tissues time to express SCF at high enough levels to recruit bone marrow stem cells to come and accelerate tissue healing. This is…

Heart Cells Expressing Stem Cell Factor Show Less Cell Death After a Heart Attack

Stem Cell Factor is a cell surface protein that is expressed by several different cells, including tissue fibroblasts, heart cells, cells in the bone marrow, and blood vessel cells. Stem Cell Factor (SCF) plays important roles in the migration, proliferation, and adhesion of any cell that expresses the receptor for SCF, a molecule called c-kit. Cells that express c-kit include cardiac stem cells,…

Heart Muscle in Young Children May Be Capable of Regeneration

The heart of young children might possess untapped potential for regeneration, according to new research. For decades, scientists believed that after a child’s first few days of life, cardiac muscle cells did not divide. Heart growth was thought to occur by means of enlargement of muscle cells.

This view, however, has been seriously challenged in the last few years. New findings in mice that have…

Doubts About Cardiac Stem Cells

Within the heart resides a cell population called “c-kit cells,” which have the ability to proliferate when the heart is damaged. Several experiments and clinical trials from several labs have provided some evidence that these cells are the resident stem cell population in the heart that can repair the heart after an episode of cardiac injury.

Unfortunately, a few new studies, and in particular,…