“By probing the mechanisms of stem cell therapy, we discovered a way to heal the body without using stem cells,” said Eduardo Marbán, MD, Ph.D., executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai and the study’s senior author. “TY1 is the first exomer—a new class of drugs that address tissue damage in unexpected ways.”

How TY1 was developed

TY1 is a laboratory-made version of an RNA molecule that naturally exists in the body. The research team was able to show that TY1 enhances the action of a gene called TREX1, which helps immune cells clear damaged DNA. In so doing, TY1 repairs damaged tissue.