Applying Bacterial Homing Strategies to Target Stem Cells to Heart Tissue

Source https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2019/07/applying-bacterial-homing-strategies-to-target-stem-cells-to-heart-tissue/

Most classes of therapy benefit from some form of targeting or selectivity, helping to direct them to the tissue of interest, and away from other places where they might cause side-effects. Cells are difficult to work with, but they are also much more capable of selective targeting, since they can migrate. Many types of cell reliably find their way from one part of the body to another in the course of their functions, but where no suitable mechanism exists in human biochemistry, it is sometimes possible to look elsewhere. Here, researchers adapt a bacterial targeting system and apply it to the stem cells that might be used in regenerative therapies for damaged heart tissue.

To date, trials using stem cells, which are taken and grown from the patient or donor and injected into the patient’s heart to regenerate damaged tissue, have produced promising results. However, while these next generation <a …

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