Development of Thymosin ?4 for Treatment of Patients with Ischemic Heart Disease
Thymosin beta 4 (T?4) is a highly conserved, 43-amino acid acidic peptide (pI 4.6) that was first isolated from bovine thymus tissue over 25 years ago. It is present in most tissues and cell lines and is found in high concentrations in blood platelets, neutrophils, macrophages, and other lymphoid tissues. T?4 has numerous physiological functions, the most prominent of which being the regulation of actin polymerization in mammalian nucleated cells and with subsequent effects on actin cytoskeletal organization, necessary for cell motility, organogenesis, and other important cellular events. Recently, T?4 was shown to be expressed in the developing heart and found to stimulate migration of cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells, promote survival of cardiomyocytes (Nature, 2004), and most recently to play an essential role in all key stages of cardiac vessel developmen
thymosin ?4 ischemic heart disease t?4 actin cardiomyocytes cardioprotection ami angiogenesis akt vascular progenitors vasculogenesis anteriogenesis epicardium integrin-linked kinase wound healing