Mar 17, 2026
3 min read
Researchers increased heart-healthy hormone levels in mice and pigs with a single injection of a new experimental type of RNA that prolonged hormone production for several weeks.
A single injection of a treatment such as mRNA can help the heart muscle heal after a heart attack in mice and pigs.Can it work on humans?
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A single shot of self-amplifying RNA can repair tissue damage from a heart attack, a new study in pigs and mice shows.
It can take weeks or months to recover from a heart attack, but new research has found a new way to boost the heart's natural repair hormone production with a single injection.Although the shot has not yet been tested in humans, researchers believe it may one day offer hope for a faster recovery.
"This system is revolutionary because it uses skeletal muscle as a factory to produce the proteins we need," said Dr. Ke Huang, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Texas A&M University.
Article Continues Below A heart attack is usually caused by a blocked artery that prevents oxygen-rich blood from reaching the heart muscle.Although surgery can remove the blockage, the heart also needs to recover from oxygen starvation.If it is not treated soon, it will be closed.red tissue in place is not very good at pumping blood and can increase heart failure.
"Heart disease is still the number one killer in the US," said Ke Cheng, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University and senior author of the new study.Repairing heart muscle cells after a heart attack can reduce the risk of death from heart failure, but it's a challenge."It is very difficult to deliver drugs to the heart without invasive procedures," Cheng told Live Science.
In a study published on March 5 in the journal Science, Chen and his colleagues showed that a single injection of self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) into hind leg muscle cells healed heart muscle tissue in mice and pigs by increasing levels of a hormone called atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP).
When studying mice, the researchers found that ANP levels are much higher in newborns than in adults—a difference they attributed to ANP's role in heart development.This inspired Cheng and colleagues to see if it was possible to temporarily raise ANP levels in adult mice to improve the heart."We wanted to see if we could supplement ANP with a self-amplifying RNA," Cheng said.
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During the injection, the RNA instructs the muscle tissue to produce a molecule called proANP, which enters the bloodstream and is converted to ANP when it reaches the heart.
The mechanism is similar to how mRNA vaccines work.Like mRNA, saRNA contains instructions for making a protein.Both mRNA and saRNA are degraded within days, but saRNA directs the cell to make more copies of itself so that it can continue to renew itself and produce protein for about four weeks.
The first saRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for use in Japan and Europe, but saRNA has never been used in heart treatment.
"I think this is the perfect use of Sarna," said Anna Blakeney, a biomedical engineer at the University of British Columbia who studied Sarna.She pointed out that mRNA doesn't work for such studies because it disappears so quickly.
Although this new method of increasing ANP has not been tested in humans, it appears to help heart cells in mice and pigs.Because saRNA is a longer-acting form of mRNA, it uses the same delivery system as the COVID-19 vaccines, which improves the safety of the vaccine itself.However, future studies are still needed to determine which dose of ANP is safe and effective in humans.
“We still don't know exactly what the mechanism would be that would benefit patients,” said Dr. Dan Atar, professor of cardiology at Oslo University Hospital, who was not involved in the study.Previous studies in which heart attack patients were treated with natriuretic peptides (such as ANP) did not aid recovery, he noted, so this new one-injection method would need to be proven in clinical trials.
More research is still needed on this potential treatment, including trials to confirm the mechanism, test the safety of the injection, and monitor its effectiveness. But once these steps are taken, it could be a promising means of healing the heart after a heart attack.
Zhang, Q., Tao, H., Zhu, D., Yu, Z., Hu, S., Wu, Y., Yan, N., Hu, Y., Liu, S., Liu, M., Wahl, T.B., Ranard, L.S., Cheng, X., Romanov, A., Liu, J., Chang., Shang.M.Cheng, K.C.(2026).Single injection of Nppa self-amplifying RNA intramuscularly for the treatment of myocardial infarction.Science, 391(6789), edau9394.https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adu9394
Eva Amsen is a science writer based in London.His articles on biology, chemistry, environmental science and the intersection of science and art have appeared in Undark, The Observer (Guardian), Nature, Hakai, Nautilus, Forbes.com and other publications.Eva won a British Science Writers Association Award in the Opinion/Essay category in 2020 and was awarded a Falling Walls Journalism Fellowship in the same year.He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto.
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