Vitamin C Transforms Mouse Stem Cells Into Heart Muscle Cells

Apr. 1, 2003 - DALLAS, April 1 - Vitamin C helped convert mouse embryonic stem cells growing in the laboratory to heart muscle cells, researchers report today's rapid track publication of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

(Rapid track articles are released online early because they have major clinical impact or represent important basic science discoveries. This basic-research discovery could lead to future research on ways to treat people suffering from damaged heart muscle.)

"Although the findings of this study are very preliminary with respect to their impact on human lives, this line of research has enormous implications for the future care of thousands of patients who develop heart failure each year," says Robert O. Bonow, M.D., president of the American Heart Association. "Identifying mechanisms to transform stem cells into differentiated heart muscle cells is an important step toward clinical reality."

Richard T. Lee, M.D., senior author of the study, says: "We have been taught for decades that when your heart cells are dead, they are dead and there is nothing we can do about it. We are excited about anything suggesting that we can grow more heart cells."

Lee and his colleagues tested 880 bioactive substances - including drugs and vitamins - approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to see if they stimulated the mouse stem cells to become heart muscle cells. The cells were genetically altered to give off a fluorescent bright green color when viewed under a microscrope if they had become heart muscle cells.

"We only got 1 out of the 880 to light up, and that was from ascorbic acid, the chemical commonly known as vitamin C," says Lee, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and a lecturer in biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. (read the rest of the article)

(This article is fairly old, but I had never seen it -- in spite of my off and on -- obviously, currently ON -- compulsion to investigate ascorbic acid's role in health. I came across the link while investigating the Pauling Therapy for CVD, from reading the book, "Practicing Medicine Without a License?" I hope others here find it interesting. I think it is worth considering. Anticipating a natural question... Linus Pauling was very much a humanitarian. I suspect the reason he and Dr. Rath patented the "invention" was not motivated by money, but to protect the idea from being modified and still associate it with their names; to prevent adulteration, by good intentions or otherwise. Just a guess.)