Leveraging Human Tissue for Discovery in Heart Transplantation.

This article discusses the limitations of using rodent models in heart transplantation research and highlights the shift towards using human specimens for discovery research. The authors focus on a study that uses single-nucleus RNA sequencing to investigate the cellular landscape of transplanted pediatric hearts. The study identifies important candidate mediators of heart transplant failure, such as graft-infiltrating macrophages and natural killer cells. The authors also explore the dynamics of immune cells within the failing transplanted heart and highlight the potential therapeutic targets that could be investigated further. However, the study has limitations due to the small sample size and the difficulty in obtaining healthy heart transplant tissue. Overall, the article emphasizes the potential of single-cell sequencing and other molecular pathology techniques in advancing our understanding of heart transplantation. [Extracted from the article]