Endocrine Abstracts

The functional oxytocin (OT) system is present in the heart and stimulate cardiomyocyte (CM) differentiation of embryonic stem cells. Presently, we are reporting that the OT stimulates CM differentiation of stem cells isolated from the rat heart and termed as side population cells (SP). Specifically, the phenotype of SP-CD31(−) cells, but not SP-CD31(+) cells, proliferate in the presence of OT; the OT treatment promote cell aggregation, and then stimulate differentiation...