Year 2
The goal of our project is use stem cells to help identify new drugs for the treatment of Danon Disease, a rare, inherited disease that causes severe heart disease. Patients with Danon disease generally die in the second and third decade of life of heart failure. We have been working on this project for roughly two yeara. Since starting we have developed over 7 stem cell lines from patients with Danon Disease. We have used these stem cells to make heart cells and have screened hundreds of drugs on these cells. We have identified several drugs using this system that show some promise and are undergoing more rigorous testing. We have also begun working with mice that have been genetically engineered to model Danon disease. We hope that these mice can be used to test out the new drugs we have identified using our stem cell screens.