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Developing A Cardiomyocyte Proliferation Probe Utilizing Non-Degradable Ckap2., Suraj Kannan

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Currently, one of the biggest controversies in the field of cardiac regenerative medicine revolves around the ability of cardiomyocytes to proliferate. In contrast to the long-held hypothesis that the heart is terminally differentiated, post-mitotic organ, some studies have suggested that the heart is capable of undergoing limited regeneration following injury. Others have reported induction of cardiomyocyte proliferation following various treatments, mostly in vitro. Conventional tools such as BrdU labeling fail to distinguish between mitotic events and other phenomena such as endoreduplication or poly-nucleation, thus making it difficult to assess cardiomyocyte proliferation. The present study presents a novel and innovative way …