Researchers create genetic pacemaker
Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Researchers have put together a "biological pacemaker" in guinea pigs by slipping a gene into their hearts -- a first step in what could lead to alternatives to the electronic devices now implanted in hundreds of thousands of people each year.
The healthy human heart already contains a small number of specialized "pacemaker" cells, which initiate the muscle's beat and determine its rate and rhythm of contraction. But disease can cause the cells to malfunction.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University used a virus to deliver genes to cells in the guinea pigs' ventricles -- places in the heart where the animals have no natural "pacemaker" cells. Days later, some of the animals' ventricle cells had been converted into "pacemaker" cells.
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"We effectively lifted the anchor, freeing muscle cells to re-establish ability they last held in the developing embryo," said Eduardo Marban, a member of the research team. The study was published in today's issue of the journal Nature.