MicroRNAs in Cardiac Regeneration

The adult mammalian heart has a modest regenerative capacity. MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, represent an innovative tool in cardiac regenerative therapy because they can be easily synthesized and exploited to induce cardiac progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation, adult myocardial cell proliferation, transplanted cell engraftment in the injured heart, and differentiation into the cardiovascular lineage. MyomiRs are the most promising and exploited miRNAs in cardiac regeneration, given their capacity to induce a cardiac differentiation program both in noncardiac cells such as fibroblasts and in CPCs. The feasibility of myomiRs as a regenerative therapeutic approach was successfully demonstrated for the first time with miR-155, which was shown to reduce hCPC migration and necrosis. Additional studies are needed to adjust the chemistry and facilitate the delivery of myomiRs to make them more stable and to develop them as fully effective cardiac treatments.