Revealing new directions for cardiomyopathy research and potential avenues for treatment

Cardiomyopathy is a class of heart disease that affects approximately 1 in 500 people in the UK. Characterised by impaired heart muscle, it often manifests at a young age due to a strong genetic component, causing symptoms including stroke, heart failure, increased blood clot risk and sudden cardiac death. One known cause is mutations in cardiac actin, a major protein in heart muscle contraction, but the molecular mechanism linking actin to cardiomyopathy remains hazy. Better understanding of this pathway could lead to the first treatment to prevent and/or reverse cardiomyopathy.

The Medical and Life Sciences Research Fund is supporting PhD student Will Scott at Warwick Medical School whose aim is to look at actin via protein expression-based assays, image cardiomyopathic actin in live heart muscle cells, and elucidate therapeutically relevant information, such as changes in interactions, polymerisation rate, localisation and overall amount of actin in cardiomyopathy. This will be the first native-state live imaging of actin and could uncover novel cardiomyopathy treatment approaches.