Disease Focus: Heart Disease
Metabolic regulation of cardiac differentiation and maturation
Cells in the body take up nutrients from their environment and metabolize them in a complex set of biochemical reactions to generate energy and replicate. Control of these processes is particularly important for heart cells, which need large amounts of energy to drive blood flow throughout the body. Not surprisingly, the nutritional requirements of heart […]
Improving Existing Drugs for Long QT Syndrome type 3 (LQT3) by hiPSC Disease-in-Dish Model
This project uses patient hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes to develop a safe and effective drug to treat a serious heart health condition. This research and product development will provide a novel method for a human genetic heart disorder characterized by long delay (long Q-T interval) between heart beats caused by mutations in the Na+ channel α subunit. […]
Tissue Collection for Accelerating iPSC Research in Cardiovascular Diseases
Heart failure is a very common and chronic condition defined by an inability of the heart to pump blood effectively. Over half of cases of heart failure are caused by a condition called dilated cardiomyopathy, which involves dilation of the heart cavity and weakening of the muscle. Importantly, many cases of this disease do not […]
Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiovascular Progenitor Cells for Cardiac Cell Therapy.
Despite therapeutic advances, cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in California. Regenerative therapies that restore normal function after a heart attack would have an enormous societal and financial impact. Although very promising, regenerative cardiac cell therapy faces a number of challenges and technological hurdles. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC) allow […]
Preclinical evaluation of human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiovascular progenitors in a large animal model
Because the regenerative capacity of adult heart is limited, any substantial cell loss as a result of a heart attack is mostly irreversible and may lead to progressive heart failure. Human pluripotent stem cells can be differentiated to heart cells, but their properties when transplanted into an injured heart remain unresolved. We propose to perform […]
Epigenetic regulation of human cardiac differentiation
Each cell type in our body has its own identity. This identity allows a heart cell to contract repetitively, and a brain cell to conduct nerve impulses. Each cell type gains its identity by turning on or off thousands of genes that together give the cell its identity. Understanding how these sets of genes are […]
Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Pacemaking Cells
Currently, over 350,000 patients per year with abnormal heart rhythm receive electronic pacemakers to restore their normal heart beat. Electronic pacemakers do not respond to the need for changing heart rate in situations such as exercise and have limited battery life, which can be resolved with biopacemakers. In this proposed project, we will examine methods […]
Studying Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia with patient-specific iPS cells
Most heart conditions leading to sudden death or impaired pumping heart functions in the young people (
Mechanism of heart regeneration by cardiosphere-derived cells
In the process of a heart attack, clots form suddenly on top of cholesterol-laden plaques, blocking blood flow to heart muscle. As a result, living heart tissue dies and is replaced by scar. The larger the scar, the higher the chance of premature death and disability following the heart attack. While conventional treatments aim to […]
A new paradigm of lineage-specific reprogramming
Recently, we devised and reported a new regenerative medicine paradigm that entails temporal/transient overexpression of induced pluripotent stem cell based reprogramming factors in skin cells, leading to the rapid generation of “activated” cells, which can then be directed by specific growth factors and small molecules to “relax” back into various defined and homogenous tissue-specific precursor […]