Precision medicine considers each person’s unique genetic makeup, lifestyle and environment when considering treatments for illness and disease. A team of Washington University in St. Louis researchers is taking steps toward developing precision medicine for patients with irregular heartbeats by studying how two anti-arrhythmic drugs affect different parts of the heart. Jeanne Nerbonne, PhD, professor […]
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $2.1 million four-year grant for cardiac optogenetics research led by Chao Zhou, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering. Cardiac optogenetics allows researchers to control the opening and closing of ion channels, simulating different kinds of heart conditions, all the way […]
The heart relies on electrical signals generated by ion channel proteins to tell it when to expand and contract. Genetic mutations in the genes that encode ion channel proteins, as well as changes in the expression of properties of these proteins that alter ion channel function, expose patients to various problems, from an irregular heartbeat […]