IDENTIFYING HEART FAILURE
IDENTIFYING CAUSES OF HEART FAILURE
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Donald M. Bers, PhD |
“More people are
surviving heart attacks and living longer than ever before. Currently, five million Americans are in the late stages of heart failure with no long-term options other than getting a heart transplant,” says Donald M. Bers, PhD, professor and chair of physiology, Stritch School of Medicine. Bers is principal investigator and program director for a Program Project Grant from the National Institutes of Health, one of three recently awarded to Stritch researchers.Bers leads a nationally respected team of scientists at Loyola University Health System, Stritch, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The group will study the molecular pathways, acute causes, and underlying signal processes that lead to contractile heart failure and arrhythmia.
Bers believes that by better understanding the molecular pathways and signaling processes, researchers may be able to identify specific targets for drug or gene therapy, and provide new treatment options for patients suffering from heart failure as well as arrhythmias.
A key factor in this study is calcium. One of the most important ions in the heart, calcium enables cardiac chambers to contract and relax, a process called excitation-contraction coupling (ECC) that Bers has researched and written about extensively throughout his career. Researchers will focus on two calcium systems that are known to impact ECC, arrhythmias, and nuclear signaling.