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Fall/Winter 2010
The research team of Leonard M. Eisenberg, Ph.D., and Carol A. Eisenberg, Ph.D., co-directors of the Stem Cell Laboratory at New York Medical College, is investigating the use of adult stem cells derived from bone marrow to create cardiac progenitor cells that might someday be used to repair damaged heart tissue in humans. Joining the Eisenbergs are, from left, post-docs Nadya V. Mezentseva, Ph.D., Grazia Iaffaldono, Ph.D., Ph.D. candidates Victor Garcia and Jinpu Yang (seated), research assistant Marissa Sansone, and post-doc Mathieu C. Rémond, D.Sc.
of Physiology. Later that year, Leonard took the position of professor of medicine and physiology and Carol became associate professor (see Chironian SpringSummer 2008). Cell biology is Carol Eisenberg’s particular expertise, while Leonard’s is molecular biology and microscopy. They describe their research collaboration as 50/50 for some projects and 90/10 for others, although they are always working as a team. The laboratory is a component of what will eventually become the New York Medical College/Westchester Medical Center Translational Stem Cell Center, and the Eisenbergs see great potential in the possibilities for future collaborations, not only between the two Valhalla institutions but with other New York area medical institutions and industry as well.
INTERRELATED CARDIAC RESEARCH The Eisenbergs are now working on three interrelated research projects funded by two NIH grants. In the first project, they are exploring the cell biology of the adult heart, using a type of transgenic mouse model that has rarely been used to study anything other than embryonic heart development. “Examining the Cellular Hetero geneity of Adult Myocardium Using Transgenic Mice” received a total of $795,000 in NIH Recovery Act funding in 2009 and 2010. The Eisenbergs and their team are investigating the distribution of cardiac progenitor cells and new myocytes in the adult heart, as well as a pattern of cells that were identified using the transgenic mouse model. The latter cells were originally thought to be newly formed heart muscle cells, but the two scientists now believe
that these are myocytes whose characteristics have changed in response to injury, such as the kind of damage that occurs during a heart attack. In that scenario, blood flow to a section of heart muscle is blocked, whereupon the muscle begins to die from lack of oxygen. The Eisenbergs hope their research will lead to better understanding of both the healthy and the diseased heart. The team’s second NIH grant, “Non-Canonical Wnt Signal Trans duction and Cardiogenesis,” was initially funded in 2005 as what Leonard calls “a standard developmental biology grant.” In that study, they were looking at molecular signaling factors involved in the organization of the developing fetal heart in the chick and frog. Now they are exploring protein signals that regulate the genes controlling the differentiation of cardiac stem