从开创性的干细胞研究到在太空中研究心脏, 美国心脏协会主席的观点根植于团队合作

费城——十几岁的时候，加州的一位医生. 约瑟夫·吴 not only worked on his family's pear and apple farm, he was the manager. 所以他密切关注着一切, such as the way migrant workers came together as a team that was greater than the sum of its parts.

The family s老 the farm once Wu went off to Yale University's medical school. 当他开始在实验室和临床环境中工作时, 吴再次见证了合作的好处.

Now he's 斯坦福心血管研究所所长 and volunteer president of the 美国心脏协会. Wu is a pioneer in cutting-edge research and he's studying the effects of microgravity in space on the human heart. Yet when he detailed all his intricate work during his Presidential Address at the AHA's 科学会议 conference Sunday, 吴不断提到他所说的“一个简单的信息”:团队合作很重要.

“当我们是一个团队的一员时，我们都会过得更好, especially when we all work together to do the right thing for the right reasons,他说. "Because cardiovascular disease does not care about any differences that may divide us. Only by uniting our efforts will we make the biggest advances in preventing, 和治疗, 心脏疾病."

吴的演讲主要集中在他最喜欢的研究课题:干细胞.

He explained that embryonic stem cells have ethical concerns and adult stem cells are, 从本质上说, 老. So, 自2007年以来, his work has relied on a third kind – a lab-generated version called induced pluripotent stem cells, 或iPS细胞.

"They are as essential to my lab as the pear and apple trees were on my dad's farm,他说.

Wu noted that what makes iPS cells special is that they "offer the best aspects of both embryonic and adult stem cells with none of the ethical concerns nor senescence issues." Others agree; in 2012, the scientists who discovered iPS cells won a Nobel Prize.

iPS cells are made by combining four reprogramming factors with blood cells or skin cells. 这个过程将这些细胞重置到它们的胚胎阶段. 在这一点上，它们可以变成任何类型的细胞. 吴的实验室专门研究将它们转化为心脏细胞.

吴还利用诱导性多能干细胞进行他所谓的“培养皿临床试验”.而不是使用, 说, 1,000人来测试一种新药, 这种药物可以在1号上进行测试——更快更容易,000个iPS细胞. 他把这个过程称为“精准心血管医学的圣杯”."

自从吴开始研究iPS细胞, another Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough arrived: the gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. 吴找到了一种将它们结合在一起的方法. 他通过讲述一个八口之家的故事来解释, 传世三代, 死于心脏性猝死. A member of the third generation came to Wu seeking to find and understand the root cause of all these tragedies.

利用诱导性多能干细胞制造心脏细胞，即心肌细胞, Wu indeed found the culprit of the sudden cardiac death – a mutation involving the LMNA gene. 使用CRISPR，他们能够纠正它.

工作本可以就此结束. 然而, 一路走来, Wu's team discovered that many of those patients also developed early-onset high blood pressure. 他们再次试图找到并理解问题所在.

这一次，他们使用iPS细胞来制造血管内皮细胞. 他们将问题的根源追溯到KLF2基因. 使用“培养皿中的临床试验”,“他们发现了一种药, 六个月后, 把血压读数调到了正确的方向.

“我希望在未来的几十年里, 这样的工作将成为我们工具箱的一个常见部分,吴说.

加快这一进程, 斯坦福心血管研究所正在分享其iPS细胞生物库, 已发送4个以上,向全球500多名调查人员提供了5000瓶.

“我们越互相帮助, 我们越帮助自己, 我们现在的病人, 以及我们的子孙后代,吴说.

吴实验室的另一个重点领域涉及太空旅行.

当他还是个在台湾的孩子时，这个主题就吸引了他. 大约十年前, he began thinking about the day when flying to space will be as routine as flying anywhere on Earth. That led to thoughts about how the human heart would respond to zooming through zero gravity.

2016年，他的实验室将2D人类iPS细胞衍生的心肌细胞送入太空. In 2020, they sent 3D, human iPS cell-derived engineered heart tissues to space.

“在这两种情况下, we found that microgravity in space can actually cause abnormal cardiac changes,他说.

今年早些时候, 吴在佛罗里达州观看了SpaceX公司发射的3枚火箭,800个人类iPS细胞衍生的心脏类器官. 其中一半接受药物治疗，一半没有. 结果正在分析中，预计很快就会有结果.

"Our goal is to come up with drugs that can mitigate the adverse cardiovascular effects of microgravity,他说.

作为他对这个主题讨论的一部分, Wu turned to two experts: NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli and Satoshi Furukawa of Japan's space agency. 两人目前都在国际空间站.

在国际空间站为吴的地址制作的视频中, Moghbeli said: "I encourage those in attendance to think about taking your research beyond Earth's horizon. 通过天基研究, we can hopefully find ways to treat many of the mitigating ailments that humans develop on our planet. 感谢您为治疗地球上的病人所做的一切."

With that, she and Furukawa waved, then floated up and off the screen, together.

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