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Heart Regeneration: Opportunities and Challenges for Drug Discovery with Novel Chemical and Therapeutic Methods or Agents
Author(s) -
Plowright Alleyn T.,
Engkvist Ola,
Gill Adrian,
Knerr Laurent,
Wang QingDong
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
angewandte chemie international edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.831
H-Index - 550
eISSN - 1521-3773
pISSN - 1433-7851
DOI - 10.1002/anie.201307034
Subject(s) - reprogramming , regeneration (biology) , drug discovery , modalities , heart failure , microrna , progenitor cell , computational biology , chemistry , stem cell , medicine , neuroscience , bioinformatics , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , biochemistry , cell , social science , sociology , gene
Following a heart attack, more than a billion cardiac muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) can be killed, leading to heart failure and sudden death. Much research in this area is now focused on the regeneration of heart tissue through differentiation of stem cells, proliferation of existing cardiomyocytes and cardiac progenitor cells, and reprogramming of fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes. Different chemical modalities (i.e. methods or agents), ranging from small molecules and RNA approaches (including both microRNA and anti‐microRNA) to modified peptides and proteins, are showing potential to meet this medical need. In this Review, we outline the recent advances in these areas and describe both the modality and progress, including novel screening strategies to identify hits, and the upcoming challenges and opportunities to develop these hits into pharmaceuticals, at which chemistry plays a key role.