Mummery, Christine

CHRISTINE MUMMERY IS a professor of developmental biology at Universiteit Utrecht in the Netherlands and the group leader of the Mummery Group, part of the Netherlands Institute for Developmental Biology. She earned her doctoral degree in biophysics from Guy's Hospital Medical School in London and did her postdoctoral work at Hubrecht laboratory at the Netherlands Institute. Much of her research has focused on the use of stem cells in the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

The Mummery Group is dedicated to the research of both stem cells and adult cells in cardiovascular pathology. Their three main goals are to study the genetic and molecular development of the cardiovascular system, to develop models of the human cardiovascular system in culture to better study both normal development and the effect of disease, and to produce cells suitable for cardiovascular cell repair therapies. They have already made advances in improving the methodology for producing cardiomyocytes, or heart cells, from embryonic stem cells.

[Page 362]Mummery and her lab have taken a novel approach to the use of stem cells in the treatment of heart disease. Rather than inject stem cells into a damaged heart tissue, as had been tried in previous studies, they used stem cells to grow cardiomyocytes. They induced heart attacks in mice and then injected these mature cardiomyocytes into the heart muscle. The results were initially promising, but the effect faded within about a month. Careful study of the process showed that the introduced cardiomyocytes were not lining up correctly with existing cells, reducing their efficiency.

Mummery accepted a fellowship to Radcliffe in 2007–08 to continue her studies in the structure of cardiomyocytes. She is developing a new approach to her study that would involve creating heart tissue from stem cells and grafting the new tissue onto a damaged heart muscle.