A single injection of mRNA-like treatment healed heart muscle after a heart attack in mice and pigs. Could it work in humans too?

 Today's blog is about possible help to heal a heart after a heart attack. It works in mice and pigs. The next step is to figure out if it would work in humans. First, though, I explain what an mRNA shot does so you can understand the story!

(Image Credit: https://kpwashingtonresearch.org/)

WHAT IS mRNA? mRNA shots (messenger RNA vaccines) use a temporary genetic code to teach body cells to create a harmless protein resembling a virus, triggering an immune response without causing disease. These vaccines are highly effective, rapidly produced, and used for COVID-19

A single injection of mRNA-like treatment healed heart muscle after a heart attack in mice and pigs. Could it work in humans too?

Live Science, March 16, 2026 by Eva Amsen

Researchers boosted levels of a heart-healing hormone in mice and pigs with a single injection of a new, experimental form of self-amplifying RNA that prolonged hormone synthesis for many weeks.

A single shot of self-amplifying RNA can repair tissue damage from a heart attack, new research in pigs and mice shows.

It can take weeks or months to recover from a heart attack, but the new study explored a novel way to boost the production of a natural heart-repairing hormone with a single injection. Although the shot hasn't been tested in humans yet, researchers believe it could one day offer hope for a faster recovery.

''This system is revolutionary, because it's using skeletal muscle as a factory to produce the proteins that we need,'' study co-author Dr. Ke Huang, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Texas A&M University, told Live Science.

A heart attack is often caused by a blocked artery that prevents oxygen-rich blood from reaching the heart muscle. While surgery can remove the blockage, the heart muscle itself also needs to recover from the oxygen starvation. If it doesn't heal quickly enough, scar tissue will take its place, which is less effective at pumping blood and may precipitate heart failure.

In the study, published March 5 in the journal Science, Ke Cheng, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University and senior author of the new study and his collaborators showed that a single injection of self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) in the muscle tissue of the hind leg could heal heart muscle cells in mice and pigs by increasing levels of a hormone called atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP).

From studying mice, researchers learned that ANP levels are much higher in newborns than in adults ‪—‬ a difference they attributed to ANP playing a role in heart development. This inspired Cheng and colleagues to see if it was possible to increase ANP levels temporarily in adult mice to help heal the heart. ''We wanted to see if we can supplement ANP with self-amplifying RNA,'' Cheng said.