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Abstract Organ regeneration is an important, fascinating, and old topic while much remains unknown in spite of extensive investigations for decades. From March 25th to 27th, 2021, the Third Chinese Symposium on Organ Regeneration took place in the beautiful ocean city of Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China. This biennial conference attracted ~ 300 academic attendees: students, postdoctoral fellows, and principal investigators, in addition to few industrial investigators. The mixed live and virtual talks covered the broad field of organ regeneration from different animal organisms to human organoids, and concluded with some impressive advances on inflammatory signaling, regenerative signaling mechanisms, new technologies, and applications for organ regeneration.

Abstract Heart regeneration is a fascinating and complex biological process. Decades of intensive studies have revealed a sophisticated molecular network regulating cardiac regeneration in the zebrafish and neonatal mouse heart. Here, we review both the classical and recent literature on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying heart regeneration, with a particular focus on how injury triggers the cell-cycle re-entry of quiescent cardiomyocytes to replenish their massive loss after myocardial infarction or ventricular resection. We highlight several important signaling pathways for cardiomyocyte proliferation and propose a working model of how these injury-induced signals promote cardiomyocyte proliferation. Thus, this concise review provides up-to-date research progresses on heart regeneration for investigators in the field of regeneration biology.