The myocardial infarction (MI) is one of the leading causes of death in the world today. Accumulated atherosclerotic plaque occluding cardiac blood vessels results in a lack of oxygen supply to parts of the heart, and consequentially the death cardiomyocytes. The damaged area is replaced by scar tissue because of the heart’s insufficient regenerative capability, and the contraction property of the post-MI heart is therefore compromised. The recent findings of an endogenous cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) population gives hope for the establishment of new methods for medical treatments of the post-MI heart. Compared to other stem/progenitor cell sources, the CPCs are committed to a cardiac fate which places them in the forefront of interesting cell sources for regenerative treatments. In this thesis, the distribution of stem cell antigen 1 (Sca-1) positive CPCs in the healthy mouse myocardium, as well as the healthy and post-MI rat left ventricle was determined and compared to the total amount of nuclei. An immunohistochemistry protocol for the detection of Sca-1+ cells was established, and the number of Sca-1+ cells and the total number of nuclei in the different mouse and rat tissue samples were counted using laser scanning cytometry (LSC). The results could conclude a significantly higher distribution of Sca-1+ cells in the mouse atrium compared to the mouse ventricle, and a significantly higher distribution of Sca-1+ cells in the 8 days post-MI rat left ventricle compared to the healthy rat left ventricle. Furthermore, a heterogeneous distribution within the 8 days post-MI rat left ventricle was observed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-81720 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Christoffersson, Jonas |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för klinisk och experimentell medicin, Linköpings universitet, Hälsouniversitetet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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