In developed countries, cardiovascular diseases are currently the first cause of death. Cardiospheres (CSs) and cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) have been found to have the ability to regenerate the myocardium after myocardial infarction (MI). In recent years, much effort has been made to gain insight into the human heart repair mechanisms, in which miRNAs have been shown to play an important role. In this regard, to elucidate the involvement of miRNAs, we evaluated the miRNA expression profile across human heart biopsy, CSs and CDCs using microarray and next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. We identified several miRNAs more represented in the progenitors, where some of them can be responsible for the proliferation or the maintenance of an undifferentiated state, while others have been found to be downregulated in the undifferentiated progenitors compared with the biopsies. Moreover, we also found a correlation between downregulated miRNAs in CSs/CDCs and patient age (eg miR-490) and an inverse correlation among miRNAs upregulated in CSs/CDCs (eg miR-31).

中文翻译：

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人类心脏中的 miRNA 表达分析：未分化祖细胞与活检组织——对增殖和衰老的影响

在发达国家，心血管疾病是目前的第一死因。已发现心球 (CS) 和心球衍生细胞 (CDC) 在心肌梗塞 (MI) 后具有再生心肌的能力。近年来，人们努力深入了解人类心脏修复机制，其中 miRNA 已被证明发挥重要作用。在这方面，为了阐明 miRNA 的参与，我们使用微阵列和下一代测序 (NGS) 技术评估了人类心脏活检、CS 和 CDC 的 miRNA 表达谱。我们确定了几种在祖细胞中更具代表性的 miRNA，其中一些可能负责增殖或维持未分化状态，而与活组织检查相比，其他一些在未分化的祖细胞中被发现下调。此外，我们还发现 CSs/CDCs 中下调的 miRNA 与患者年龄（例如 miR-490）之间存在相关性，而 CSs/CDCs 中上调的 miRNAs（例如 miR-31）之间存在负相关。