Our heart is not able to regenerate after damage. Numerous cardiac cells are lost during heart disease and this results in a permanent decline of his pumping function. Our team has contributed to understanding the mechanisms that halt the regenerative capacity of the cardiac muscle after birth and developed therapeutic strategies to promote cardiac regeneration. So far, attempts at regenerating the cardiac muscle have not considered the need to simultaneously induce adequate vascular supply to the newly formed cardiac tissue.
Our project has the ambition to develop innovative therapies based on RNA to simultaneously induce the regeneration of the muscular and vascular components of the heart after cardiac damage. Toward this goal, we will explore two hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that the regeneration of the muscular component in sufficient to trigger re-vascularization. The second hypothesis is that the two processes, the regeneration of the cardiac muscle and its blood vessels, need to be stimulated in parallel to achieve functional regeneration of the heart. Whatever the mechanism, our project will develop novel RNA drugs, encapsulated into lipid nanoparticles, able to simultaneously trigger the regeneration of the cardiac muscle and its effective vascularisation.