2018 CVM News: Provost Kotlikoff part of international research effort to prevent heart arrhythmia

Abstract

This news item from the Cornell Chronicle is about: The most common and potentially lethal complication following a heart attack is the heart's inability to do one of its most basic jobs: beat at a normal rate. Following myocardial infarction, heart muscle cells are replaced by fibroblasts and new blood vessels, which do not conduct electricity and leave the heart susceptible to ventricular tachycardia - an excessive heart rate that can result in sudden death. These non-heart cells disrupt the normal pattern of electrical conduction that is critical for effective pumping. If there were a way to make these cells electrically active, one could bridge the conduction block to a certain degree, and greatly decrease dangerous post-infarction complications. Provost Michael Kotlikoff - a professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the Provost Michael Kotlikoff College of Veterinary Medicine - is part of an international collaboration that is aiming to bridge that gap in damaged hearts with a simple gene-therapy approach.