Metabolic switch may regenerate heart muscle following heart attack For news media More information Research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that a new therapeutic approach for heart failure could help restore cardiac function by regenerating heart muscle. In a study recently published in the journal Circulation, the UW team describes its success in improving, in a mouse model, the function of heart muscle by temporarily blocking a key metabolic enzyme after a heart attack. This simple intervention, the researchers say, could ultimately help people regain cardiac function. “Our goal was to gain new understanding of how the heart can heal itself following injury at the molecular and cellular level and see if there was a way to restore cardiac function to an earlier state,” says UW–Madison’s Ahmed Mahmoud, professor of cell and regenerative biology in the School of Medicine and Public Health. “We know that a metabolic switch occurs in the heart following birth, which contributes to the loss of capacity for cardiac regeneration. But we didn’t know which mechanisms regulate that metabolic switch. So that’s where we started our research.”