Shih-Lei Lai Laboratory

Heart failure is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, in part because of the inability of the human heart to replenish lost tissue post myocardial infarction (MI).

Unlike adult mice and humans, many vertebrates, including certain fish and amphibians, are capable of endogenous heart regeneration at adult stages. While zebrafish exhibits a remarkable regenerative capacity after various cardiac insults, this ability is not shared by another teleost, the medaka, despite medaka has similar anatomic structure, physiological conditions and living environment. In order to identify the cellular and molecular bases for this difference, we performed comparative analyses in zebrafish and medaka following cardiac cryoinjury. Transcriptomic comparisons point to major differences in immune response and angiogenic neovascularization between these models. Our functional studies indeed highlighted the complex role of the immune response and neovascularization during cardiac regeneration, and serve as a platform for identifying and testing additional regulators of cardiac repair.

Our primary focus is to investigate the differential immune responses in regenerative (e.g. zebrafish and neonatal mice) and non-regenerative models (e.g. medaka and adult mice), and translate the knowledge into potential therapeutics to modulate the immune response and improve cardiac repair in patients suffered from MI.