Toward regenerative medicine: Newly engineered proteins might help repair damaged heart muscle

In a step toward regenerative medicine, researchers are reporting the development of newly engineered proteins that have the potential to repair damaged heart muscle and possibly other medical applications. Scientists are just beginning to understand a group of mysterious, protein-rich intracellular structures called “intrinsically disordered proteins”, which now appear to play key roles in normal cell function. In recent studies, researchers demonstrated for the first time that they could engineer these proteins in the lab and use them as molecular building blocks to make larger structures that could have useful applications ranging from drug delivery to tissue engineering. One possible application includes using these proteins to repair damaged tissue after a heart attack, the researchers noted. Their study, published in Nature Chemistry, was partly funded by NHLBI.