Year 3

A leading cause of heart related morbidity and mortality is cardiac rhythm disturbances. In fact sudden cardiac death is primarily due to abnormalities of cardiac electrical conduction abnormalities. At present, the therapeutic approaches to treatment of cardiac arrhythmias are limited to cardiac device including pacemakers and defibrillators. These devices are expensive and carry additional risks to the patients during after surgical implantation. Our overall goal is to identify the key regulatory pathways that lead to differentiation and formation of various cells type of cardiac conduction cells.
Our laboratories focuses on the molecular pathways that guide the formation of distinct cell types in the human heart. The proper formation of these cell types from a unique cardiac progenitor is an important, yet complex biological question that our laboratory is aiming to answer. In this regard, in the past year we have identified a unique molecular pathway by which a unique population of cardiac progenitor cells are added to heart and also participate in the formation and patterning of the cardiac pacemaker cells. We are using mouse models to study the formation of cardiac stem cells and also the mechanisms by which they acquire distinct identities. To this end, our mutant mouse models display abnormal formation of the SA node which is the primary site of cardiac beating. By studying the mutant mice generated by genetic manipulation of stem cells, we aim to further advance our knowledge of different forms of cardiac stem cell formation. During the past year we have made significant progress in elucidating the ways by which cardiac progenitor cells contribute the pacemaker cell formation and putting forth new paradigms for cardiac pacemaker stem cell formation.