Topic Overview:

Congenital heart disease, the most common and lethal type of birth defect, often shows too little heart muscle, while cardiac hypertrophy, the most common precursor of heart failure in adults, exhibits too much heart muscle. To understand the underlying abnormalities of heart muscle growth, Kühn investigates basic mechanisms of cellular growth and regeneration. Proliferation of differentiated heart muscle cells, cardiomyocytes, is the cellular mechanism of heart growth during development and regeneration. The capacity to regenerate heart muscle varies widely in biology: While adult mammals show very little evidence for cardiac regeneration, adult zebrafish and neonatal mice have the capacity to regenerate heart muscle. Kühn and colleagues have investigated how growth factors control heart muscle cell proliferation in development. They have demonstrated that administration of recombinant growth factors can be used to stimulate heart muscle cell proliferation and cardiac regeneration in animals. In his lecture, Kühn will discuss basic mechanisms of heart muscle cell proliferation and make connections to heart muscle cell biology, heart muscle disorders, and potential heart failure therapies.