New Medication That Imitate RNA Could Help with Heart Attacks
Benjamin Pruss
BIOL-2110-001 GENETICS
Professor Guy F. Barbato
December 9th, 2025
Recently, a new medication was created by scientists at Cedars-Sinai, called TY1, that can help repair damaged DNA. It achieves this by replicating a natural RNA molecule that boosts a gene that helps remove damaged DNA, thereby facilitating the recovery of injured tissues. This can reduce scarring and could potentially help with the recovery from heart attacks.
The research that led to this new medication began more than twenty years ago at Johns Hopkins University. Here, they found a way to extract progenitor cells, which help in healing, from heart tissue. At Cedars-Sinai, it was discovered that these progenitor cells release small sacs, called exosomes, that contain RNA that helps in tissue repair.
TY1 is an engineered copy of the RNA that helps in tissue repair, found in the exosomes. It increases the number of immune cells that repair damage to DNA. The researchers also believe that TY1 could assist in autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks healthy tissue.
TY1 is interesting because it actually lets the body fix damaged DNA instead of just managing he problem. It's also really cool how this idea came from research that started a long time and was able to be resurfaced.
ReplyDeleteIt is crazy to think that something like this wasn't even a dream as close as 50 years ago. The number of things that biologists can accomplish is such a short time is truly fascinating.
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