For Failing Hearts: Gene therapy stops decline in animals
By Susan Milius
Tests in hamsters have raised hopes for creating a gene therapy to stop the common downward spiral of chronic heart failure.
What distinguishes the proposed treatment is a novel version of a calcium-regulating gene plus an improved way of getting that gene into heart cells, says Kenneth Chien of the University of California, San Diego. In a laboratory breed of hamsters that commonly develops progressive heart failure, the treatment arrested the decline for the 7 months that the experiment ran, Chien and his colleagues report in the August Nature Medicine.