Search for magic patches that heal the broken heart

Heart failure caused by acute myocardial infarction remains a great challenge in clinical practice due to the high mortality rate associated with this pathology. Current therapies mainly aim to prevent expansion of the initial infarct lesion; however, approaches to effective regeneration of functional myocardium remain elusive. A recent breakthrough is that scientists have shown a collagen-based cardiac patch containing follistatin-like 1 can not only attenuate infarction-induced heart injuries, but also stimulate proliferation of endogenous myocytes. These results raise the possibility that the intrinsic cardiomyocyte division, albeit a rare phenomenon, may be therapeutically manipulated and augmented for treating myocardial infarction and heart failure, at least in mice.