Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Director, Pediatric Institute for Heart Regeneration and Therapeutics (I-HRT)Associate Director, Richard King Mellon Foundation Institute for Pediatric Research, University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine

Heart Regeneration

Terminally differentiated cells have arrived at their final form and function. Many terminally differentiated cell types are polyploid, i.e. they possess multiple copies of the normally diploid genome. Mammalian heart muscle cells, termed cardiomyocytes, are one example of polyploid cells. Terminally differentiated cardiomyocytes are bi- and multi-nucleated and have polyploid nuclei. Recent mechanistic studies of polyploid cardiomyocytes indicate that they limit cellular proliferation and, hence, heart regeneration. Dr. Kuhn will present the mechanisms generating bi- and multinucleated cardiomyocytes and the mechanisms generating polyploid nuclei. He will introduce hypotheses about how these mechanisms might relate to cardiomyocyte proliferation and cardiac regeneration. We will discuss how these new findings could be applied to advance heart regeneration research, and how they relate to studies of other polyploid cells, such as cancer cells.