ScienceDaily (July 31, 2009) — It takes a spleen to mend a broken heart – that’s the conclusion of a surprising new report from researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology, directed by Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD. In the July 31 issue of Science the team reports how, in following up an intriguing observation, they discovered an unexpected reservoir of the immune cells called monocytes in the spleen and went on to show that these cells are essential to recovery of cardiac tissue in an animal heart attack model.
