Baylor Heart Researchers Build a Better Mouse

The average human heart is as big as your fist.

The average mouse heart could fit on your fingernail.

The vast size difference creates a problem for researchers using mouse models to study heart disease and heart attacks. How can they measure the effects of a heart attack in a heart that is smaller than a button and beats faster than the speed of sound?

Years of research at the DeBakey Heart Center at Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital are yielding an answer. Researchers have developed ways to accurately measure even the smallest changes in heart function.

"Our first step was to develop technology to measure cardiac function in the mouse that would be followed day after day, for months and even years," said Dr. Mark Entman, a Baylor professor of medicine and scientific director of The DeBakey Heart Center. "The challenge was to induce a nonfatal heart attack, which allows us to accurately see how the heart withstands injury."

Baylor is one of only two sites in the United States that has perfected the technique. Dr. Entman developed the initial mouse model in 1996, the product of his research on the relationship of inflammation and the heart funded by the National Institutes of Health's Program Project Grant.

The pursuit of an ideal mouse model is a painstaking and continuous process, he said.

"As we started using the model we asked harder and harder questions," Dr. Entman said. "It became obvious that we had to improve the model."

Dr. Entman's research team has developed an anesthesia that is quick to act and wear off, allowing them to perform more lengthy procedures. They also developed the first nuclear camera for mice. The device allows them to see how the mouse heart works inside the body, without performing surgery.

Dr. Entman is currently working with colleagues to develop mouse models that replicate heart transplants in humans. He credits other collaborative Baylor researchers with furthering his mouse model research. And of course, he is proud of his recent alliance with Drs. Margaret Goodell and Karen Hirschi, who used his mouse model to show that bone marrow stem cells can regenerate new heart tissue ane blood vessels.

"I think one of the unique aspects about Baylor is the way we collaborate," Dr. Entman said "We don't have walls between departments."

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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