Home / Researchers from IIT Guwahati Developed Cardiac Proteins to Fix Damaged Heart

Researchers from IIT Guwahati Developed Cardiac Proteins to Fix Damaged Heart
The heart cells built using this toolbox can have the same function as the actual heart cells and can be used to restore damaged heart tissues. This toolbox can stimulate the generation of autologous heart cells in a laboratory.

by Pragti Sharma / 22 Feb 2023 16:52 PM IST / 0 Comment(s) / 388

Image Courtesy : www.facebook.com/iitgwt



The Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IIT Guwahati) research team has invented a ‘Recombinant Protein Toolbox’ containing six unique proteins, which can be utilized to transform healthy skin cells or any somatic cells from an adult human body into heart cells, particularly cardiomyocytes.



The heart cells built using this toolbox can have the same function as the actual heart cells and can be used to restore damaged heart tissues. This toolbox can stimulate the generation of autologous heart cells in a laboratory.



The research team is directed by Assistant Professor, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Dr. Rajkumar P Thummer, with his research scholar Krishna Kumar Haridhasapavalan.



The IIT Guwahati team has successfully created cell-permeant recombinant proteins that have the ability to convert skin cells to heart cells. A recombinant protein is a desired protein made by engineered host cells in a lab using recombinant DNA technology.



The IIT Guwahati researchers could ‘reprogram’ the cells and make them have the characteristics of heart cells by exposing skin cells to these proteins. This procedure can be seen as ‘re-wiring’ the genetic program of the skin cells to be more like that of heart cells.



In order to validate the biological action of the recombinant fusion proteins, the team has teamed with Dr. Vishwas Kaveeshwar from the Central Research Laboratory, SDM College of Medical Sciences and Hospital in Dharwad, Karnataka.



Explaining the components of their work, Assistant Professor, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati, Dr. Rajkumar P Thummer, said recombinant protein-based cellular reprogramming is an advantageous alternative and the safest technique among other available non-integration approaches. As these proteins do not change or alter the genome of the cells, the cells developed using this reprogramming process have a high cell therapeutic value. Several challenges associated with the heterologous production of these recombinant proteins have been handled in our six research publications in various journals.



Research Scholar at IIT Guwahati, Krishna Kumar Haridhasapavalan, said the recombinant proteins can be delivered to target sites without harmful reagents. In addition to cardiac repair, these proteins can be examined for their role in different cancers as suppressors or promotors of tumour growth.



The researchers have recently shared their outcomes on the development of cell and nucleus penetrating versions of six cardiac reprogramming transcription elements in multiple international peer-reviewed journals, including Molecular Biotechnology, Bioprocess, and Biosystems Engineering, Applied Microbiology, and Biotechnology, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, Healthcare Research, and Related Technologies Proceedings from NERC 2022, Current Research in Biotechnology, and Scientific Reports.


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