Goals
From 2007.igem.org
Revision as of 21:41, 26 October 2007 by Amendelsohn (Talk | contribs)
Our goal is to repair damaged hearts. We are engineering embryonic stem-like cells to autonomously differentiate into cardiomyocytes, recognize and bind to damaged heart cells and then activate a defined program. Bound cells will express anti-apoptosis and anti-necrosis proteins to prevent cell death, express increased amounts of a cell-cell adhesion molecule to stimulate the formation of a sheet of cells and to cause some of the cells to penetrate into the inner layers of the heart. Cells will also express a growth factor to stimulate new blood vessel formation. Cells that fail to bind in a defined amount of time are programmed to self-destruct.
