One of the most significant recent developments in cardiac research at Penn Medicine was achieved by mimicking the regeneration mechanisms of fish and frogs.

“A question that we have been asking for some time is how we can get the mammalian heart — the human heart in particular — to repair itself, since it doesn’t do it that well,” Ed Morrisey, PhD, professor of medicine, professor of cell and developmental biology, and scientific director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told Cardiology Today. “We started out with the idea that lower animals — for example, zebrafish — can do this quite readily.”

Cardiology Today about the heart muscle repair mechanisms of lower species, and how University of Pennsylvania researchers are incorporating these adaptations into human myocardial muscle regeneration.

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