Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0018799 (heart disease)
 34,133 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the industrialized world, and stem cell therapy seems to be a promising treatment for injured cardiac tissue. To reach this goal, the scientific community needs to find a good source of stem cells that can be used to obtain new myocardium in a very period range of time. Since there are many ethical and technical problems with using embryonic stem cells as a source of cells with cardiogenic potential, many laboratories have attempted to isolate potential cardiac stem cells from several tissues. The best candidates seem to be cardiac "progenitor" and/or "stem" cells, which can be isolated from subendocardial biopsies from the same patient or from embryonic and/or fetal myocardium. Regardless of the technique used to isolate and characterize these cells, it appears that the different cells isolated from adult myocardium to date are all phenotypic variations of a unique cell type that expresses several markers, such as c-Kit, CD34, MDR-1, Sca-1, CD45, nestin, or Isl-1, in various combinations.
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PMID:Cardiac stem cell research: an elephant in the room? 1924 73

Integrin-mediated cell-extracellular matrix interaction plays key roles in tissue morphogenesis and integrity. The Lin11-Isl-1-Mec-3 (LIM) domain-only particularly interesting cysteine- and histidine-rich (PINCH) protein functions as an adaptor essential for the assembly and function of the focal adhesion complex that links integrin signaling to the cytoskeleton and other intracellular signaling pathways and regulates diverse cellular processes such as cell adhesion, migration, growth, differentiation, and survival. Recent biochemical and genetic studies have greatly advanced our knowledge surrounding the molecular interactions and functions of each component of the focal adhesion complex and revealed a requirement for PINCH in early embryogenesis, in morphogenesis of the neural crest and cardiac outflow, and in myocardial growth and remodeling. In this review article, we will provide an overview of the current knowledge of the molecular interactions of PINCH with other components of focal adhesions, highlighting recent discoveries of the in vivo role of PINCH and discuss its potential implication for human heart disease.
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PMID:Particularly interesting cysteine- and histidine-rich protein in cardiac development and remodeling. 1995 91