Figure 1.

Direct cardiomyocyte reprogramming offers a potentially novel approach to cardiovascular regenerative medicine. In a mouse model of myocardial infarction, retroviral particles for cardiogenic factors directly injected into injured regions of the mouse heart (stippled area) may be used to restore cardiac function by reprogramming fibroblasts to form beating cardiomyocytes. Qian et al. (2012) and Inagawa et al. (2012) both used the cardiac transcription factors Gata4, Mef2c, and Tbx5, whereas Song et al. (2012) included Hand2.