A cell type atlas with spatial resolution at the level of single mRNA molecules reveals the interplay of cell types during tissue damage repair in the heart after cardiac infarction. Credit: Andy Chan/ Würzburg University.
Scientists at the University of Würzburg have developed a cellular map that points the way to better recovery after a heart attack.
Over the course of evolution, the human heart has largely lost its ability to regenerate. Our distant ancestors were not afflicted by heart attacks – a condition that emerged primarily with modern lifestyles marked by poor diet, obesity, and other cardiovascular risk factors.
When a heart attack occurs, the healing process leads to the formation of fibrotic scar tissue.
While this scar tissue helps stabilise the heart, too much scarring reduces the heart’s pumping capacity as functional muscle cells are lost.
Over time, this can lead to chronic heart failure or even cardiac arrest.
Atlas of the heart
Healing the heart is a highly co-ordinated process, relying on the precise interplay of many different cell types across both space and time.
With their new molecular cell type atlas of the heart, the team has visualised these intricate dynamics in time and space after injury, revealing how cells interact as the heart attempts to repair itself.
Professor Dominic Grün, Chair of Computational Biology of Spatial Biomedical Systems and Director at the Institute for Systems Immunology at the University of Würzburg, said: “Our cell atlas shows how various cell types communicate during heart repair and coordinate the healing process.
“It lays a critical foundation for future research aimed at reducing scar formation after a heart attack and maintaining the heart’s pumping capacity.”
Using cutting-edge techniques like single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics, the team discovered that specific immune cells, called macrophages, guide connective tissue cells and help prevent overgrowth of scar tissue.
Dr Andy Chan, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in Grün’s group, added: “This insight opens exciting new possibilities to actively support heart healing, for example by targeting specific signalling pathways.”
The study is published in Nature Cardiovascular Research.
