BUILDING MUSCLES WITH GENESBUILDING MUSCLES WITH GENESFixing heart ailments by delivering healthful health·ful adj. 1. Conducive to good health; salutary. 2. Healthy. health  ful·ness n. genes to the organ remains the great, unrealized hope of cardiovascular treatment. But Celladon in La Jolla La Jolla (lə hoi`yə), on the Pacific Ocean, S Calif., an uninc. district within the confines of San Diego; founded 1869. The beautiful ocean beaches, in particular La Jolla shores and Black's Beach, and sea-washed caves attract visitors and , Calif., seems to have come a step closer. It reported on the progress of the first nine human subjects to be treated with Mydicar, a "gene therapy" for heart failure, which is caused by weakened cardiac muscles.
The treatment, infused into an artery, makes use of a benign virus to transport to the heart a gene that produces the enzyme SERCA SERCA Sarcoplasmic/Endoplasmic Reticulum Calcium Atpase SERCA Sarcoplasmic Reticulum (SR) Ca2+ ATPase (major regulator, Ca2+ homeostasis, contractility, cardiac & skeletal muscle) 2a. This molecule normally helps heart-muscle cells to contract properly, but levels typically drop off in the late stages of heart failure. Dr. Roger Hajjar of Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Mount Sinai School of Medicine is a medical school found in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of reported that Mydicar was safe and there was some heart function improvement in more than half of the patients. The trial was too small for the results to be statistically significant, but Celladon is proceeding with a Phase 2 trial of 46 patients. About 5 million people in the U.S. suffer from heart failure, for which there is no cure other than a transplant. It is the nation's leading cause of hospitalization. 
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