Scientists found a completely new type of cell, helping to heal damage in the heart

Like firefighters, they will come to the scene when they discover your heart is hurt.

The human body has many miraculous healing mechanisms. When a wound is bleeding on the skin, platelets and leukocytes are immediately mobilized to heal them for several days. A wound in the mouth can heal faster than other wounds thanks to a protein called SOX2.

Scientists also know that the body heals wounds faster in the daytime than at night. They are exploiting fat cells to treat wounds without scarring.

But that is not all, the inner healing mechanisms of the body also contain many more wonderful things.

Recently, a group of scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada discovered some unknown white blood cells, which reside in the pericardium of mice and humans.

The body heals wounds in the daytime faster than at night.

These cells are likened to an emergency "repair team" . Like firefighters, they will arrive at the scene when damage occurs on the heart, seeking to remedy and quickly repair the wound.

This finding is very important. Because first, it can help heart surgeons redefine the operation plan. In the future, scientists say they are intending to study and develop these white blood cells into a new drug and type of therapy, similar to injecting stem cells.

Emergency repair team

When an organ in our body is damaged, it can repair itself to heal in two ways: using the cells inside the body itself, or the blood cells that are directed from the weekly system complete.

These blood cells can help clean up debris and dead cells from the damaged site. They also signal the regeneration of new cells, replacing lost cells. The final task of blood cells is to guard and protect the "site" area from destructive invaders such as viruses or bacteria.

However, normal blood cells want to reach the damaged organs that need to go around through the blood vessels, which is a long way. And as our bodies know, it seems to have built up some urgent "emergency stations " around important organs, where there is always a number of permanent blood cells ready for action. service.

Blood cells participate in wound healing.

These emergency stations attracted the attention of a group of scientists from the University of Calgary. A few years ago, they found evidence of some blood cells residing in the fluid bag surrounding the abdominal organs, also called the peritoneal cavity.

These cells are a type of white blood cell called macrophages and they express a protein called GATA6. Scientists named them GATA6 + cells . Because they are located in the peritoneum, when there is an injured organ, they can immediately run to the site of injury without going through the bloodstream.

The good news is that fluid bags not only appear in the peritoneal cavity. Our hearts are also surrounded by a bag called the pericardial cavity. Paul Fedak, a heart surgeon at Calgary University, thinks we can also find GATA6 + cells there.

And he correctly guessed. In a new study published in the journal Immune, Dr. Fedak demonstrated that the heart also has an emergency rescue team. GATA6 + cells are found inside the pericardial cavity of mice when they are injured.

They also occur in the pericardium, also known as the cavity lining of patients with compromised hearts. The question is why so far, scientists have found a group of cells with such important functions in the body?

GATA6 + cells stay in the pericardium.

Dr. Fedak explained, it was simply because no scientist really paid attention and went looking for them, GATA6 + cells.

"In previous mouse heart experiments, doctors often severely removed the pericardium and lost the cells before they even started the experiment , " he said. "Doctors also often strip patients' pericardium."

The future of a new therapy

The discovery by Dr. Fedak and his team is particularly significant. Because the heart is not a body that can heal itself high. Therefore, a therapy is now directed to injecting stem cells directly into the heart to enhance their recovery.

But collecting and producing stem cells is not a simple and cheap process to reach the vast majority of patients. The question is whether to replace stem cells with GATA6 +?

Like other white blood cells, GATA6 + is able to repair damage in the heart. Although it has no anti-infection effect, finding a way to exploit and amplify the effectiveness of GATA6 + can still help us recover the damage in the heart faster.

" We always know that the heart is in a bag filled with foreign fluids. Now we know that this pericardial fluid contains a lot of cells that can cure diseases, " Dr. Fedak said. " These cells may be hiding secrets to help heal and regenerate new heart muscle."

From this discovery until scientists exploited GATA6 +, turning it into a drug is not one-sided soon. Research may take years, but Fedak said that even the discovery of these cells was significant.

Now, it will cause surgeons to consider before conducting heart surgeries. " First, don't cut off the pericardium. Second, you can harvest these cells, multiply them and inject them back into the patient, " Dr. Fedak said.

Heart surgeon Paul Fedak is from University of Calgary, Canada.

Besides, there is one aspect that he and his team are also interested in to find out whether GATA6 + is effective in preventing myocardial fibrosis. It is a condition characterized by abnormally thickening and stiffening of the heart muscle, which may increase the risk of heart failure.

" Now we can see the space around the heart is a therapy window ," Dr. Fedak said. Please look forward to the new results of you and the research team at Calgary University in the future.