Fig. 4

Cell reprogramming technique for cardiac fibrosis therapy. Cardiac fibroblasts could be directly reprogrammed to cardiomyocyte-like cells through microRNAs, transcription factors and small molecules in vivo to achieve in situ cardiac tissue repair. The microRNAs and transcription factors switch the cell fate through limiting the original lineage specific genes expression or promoting the target lineage specific genes expression, and the small molecules function by promoting the chromatin opening at lineage specific loci. Cardiac fibroblasts could also be indirectly reprogrammed to cardiac progenitor cells through small molecules in vitro, which can be used for transplantation or differentiate into various cardiac cell types in a large scale for cell transplantation, disease modeling, and biobanking of patient-specific samples. CFs, cardiac fibroblasts; miRNAs, microRNAs; iCMs, induced cardiomyocyte-like cells; ciCPCs, chemically induced cardiovascular progenitor cells; ECs, endothelia cells; CMs, cardiomyocytes; SMCs, smooth muscle cells