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Ann Thorac Surg 1995;60:18
© 1995 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

Discussion

	Introduction

Top Introduction

 
See also page 12.

DR PEDRO J. DEL NIDO (Boston, MA): Doctor Chiu, this is superb work and obviously a very novel approach. I have two questions.

Stem cells are traditionally pluripotent cells, and can become any cell depending on their local environment. Is there any evidence that there is any kind of cell similar to that in the myocardium?

Second, one of the potential pitfalls at least of ß-galactosidase as a marker gene is you get a lot of staining for a small percentage of cells. What percentage of cells that you are seeing in that tissue, where you have the transfection, actually are transfected myocytes that came from skeletal muscle? Do you have an idea what the quantity is?

DR CHIU: In response to your first question, there are no stem cells in the myocardium similar to the satellite cells in the skeletal muscle. The satellite cells have many biochemical and structural similarities to fetal myoblast, but the degree of their multipotent capacity to differentiate into different muscle fibers still is not known. It already has been shown that fetal cardiac myoblast can develop into cardiac myocytes when implanted into adult hearts. Our study, I believe, provides strong circumstantial evidence that the satellite cells also can develop into cardiac muscle under proper conditions.

As to your second question, in our hands so far, the rate of gene transfection and expression when ß-galactosidase is used as a marker has been around 20%. We also are trying to use another gene marker such as the human placental alkaline phosphatase gene, with some success. Clearly, there are many technical issues that need to be addressed.

DR WILLIAM A. BAUMGARTNER (Baltimore, MD): Have you considered using any antibodies to the fast-twitch isoforms of myosin to prove whether these are truly of skeletal origin?

DR CHIU: So far, we have only used gross morphology, histology, and histochemistry as end points. We plan to use in our ongoing studies specific monoclonal antibodies as well as electron microscopy to characterize more precisely the nature of these muscle fibers.

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