Volume 24, No 11, Nov 2014

ISSN: 1001-0602 
EISSN: 1748-7838 2018 
impact factor 17.848* 
(Clarivate Analytics, 2019)

Volume 24 Issue 11, November 2014: 1367-1369

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Epicardium-to-fat transition in injured heart

Qiaozhen Liu¹, Xiuzhen Huang¹, Jin-Hee Oh², Ruei-Zeng Lin³, Shengzhong Duan¹, Ying Yu¹, Rui Yang⁴, Ju Qiu⁴, Juan M Melero-Martin³, William T Pu⁵ and Bin Zhou¹

¹Key Laboratory of Nutrition and Metabolism, Institute for Nutritional Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
²Department of Pediatrics, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea
³Department of Cardiac Surgery, Boston Children's Hospital, and Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
⁴Institute of Health Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences & Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200025, China
⁵Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, and Department of Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, 300 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA Correspondence: Bin Zhou,(zhoubin@sibs.ac.cn)

The origin of fat cells or adipocytes is a fundamental biological question with important ramifications for human health and disease1. Epicardial fat is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases such as coronary atherosclerosis2. However, the origin of these epicardial fat cells remains largely unknown. Epicardial progenitors play a pivotal role in the developing heart, by secreting paracrine signals and by differentiating into fibroblasts, smooth muscle cells, and potentially endothelial cells and cardiomyocytes3,4,5,6. Some of these developmental programs are reactivated during postnatal heart injury7,8, and reactivated adult epicardial progenitors provide pro-angiogenic protection and undergo limited epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in cardiac injury7,9. Since epicardial fat is physically adjacent to epicardial cells, we hypothesized that some of these cells originate from the epicardium during development and in postnatal heart injury.

10.1038/cr.2014.125

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