Right Turn: Cross my heart

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In 2012, Deborah Lieu from the University of California, Davis was granted $1.3 million by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to develop pacemaking cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (HiPSCs) to replace electronic pacemakers. I first wrote about this in Keeping pace with stem cell technology.

With Valentine’s Day just a week away and “hearts” on everyone’s minds, I was curious to know how her work is progressing. From what I can tell, the research is still ongoing but I can’t find a new study. Here is her Year 2 progress report from CIRM’s website:

We continued our work in improving the yield of pacemaking cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) that can be used to engineer biopacemakers. The ion channel isoform responsible for the induced membrane potential changes in hiPSCs and their differentiating cardiac progeny was determined. We focused on optimizing the duration and the timing of membrane potential manipulation in improving the efficiency of pro-pacemaking cardiac progenitor cells and pacemaking cells.

Unless Dr. Lieu has planned to announce a new study in time for February 14^th, we may be waiting a while to learn more.

So now that I’ve piqued your curiosity and disappointed you, maybe some humour can compensate. Here is more cute and clever Valentine’s-appropriate marketing from Life Technologies. Vote for your favourite here. (I promise that Life Tech doesn’t pay me to write about them. Cross my heart.)

Our regular feature, Right Turn, appears every Friday and we invite you to submit your own blog to info(at)ccrm.ca. We encourage you to be creative and use the right (!) side of your brain. We dare you to make us laugh! Right Turn features cartoons, photos, videos and other content to amuse, educate and encourage discussion.

As always, we welcome your feedback in the comment section.

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Stacey Johnson

Stacey Johnson is the editor of Signals and a contributor. For 25 years, Stacey has been providing strategic communications counsel to government, corporate, technology and health organizations. She began her career at the CTV Television Network and then moved to Hill & Knowlton Canada where she advised clients in a variety of industries and sectors. Stacey is the Vice President, Communications and Marketing for CCRM, a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies. She has a Master's degree in Public Relations. You can follow her on Twitter @msstaceyerin.

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