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Published on: August 8, 2022
Genetic Cardiomyopathies: The Lesson Learned from hiPSCs
Ilaria My1,2, Elisa Di Pasquale2,3
1Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas University, Pieve Emanuele, 20090 Milan, Italy.
Insights
Genetic cardiomyopathies are inherited heart conditions causing significant health issues. Human stem cells and genomic technologies aid in understanding disease mechanisms and developing new therapies for conditions like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
Area of Science:
- Cardiovascular Research
- Genetics
- Stem Cell Biology
Background:
- Genetic cardiomyopathies are a major cause of illness and death in young individuals.
- These inherited heart diseases can lead to heart failure, arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death.
- Understanding the pathogenicity of genetic variants is crucial for diagnosis and treatment.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review key research elucidating the pathophysiology of common genetic cardiomyopathies.
- To highlight the role of human induced pluripotent stem cells in creating patient-specific disease models.
- To focus on the application of gene-editing techniques and therapeutic strategies.
Main Methods:
- Review of scientific literature on genetic cardiomyopathies.
- Utilizing human induced pluripotent stem cells for in vitro modeling.
- Analysis of genomic technologies, including isogenic pairs.
- Examination of gene-editing techniques and therapeutic approaches.
Main Results:
- Human induced pluripotent stem cells provide valuable patient-specific models for studying disease mechanisms.
- Genomic technologies, particularly isogenic pairs, have advanced the exploration of cardiomyopathy genetics.
- Gene editing offers insights into disease characteristics and potential therapeutic targets.
Conclusions:
- Advances in stem cell and genomic technologies are crucial for understanding genetic cardiomyopathies.
- These tools enable detailed characterization of variants and the testing of novel therapeutic strategies.
- This review consolidates current knowledge on hypertrophic, dilated, arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies, and left ventricular noncompaction.
Abstract:
Genetic cardiomyopathies represent a wide spectrum of inherited diseases and constitute an important cause of morbidity and mortality among young people, which can manifest with heart failure, arrhythmias, and/or sudden cardiac death. Multiple underlying genetic variants and molecular pathways have been discovered in recent years; however, assessing the pathogenicity of new variants often needs in-depth characterization in order to ascertain a causal role in the disease. The application of human induced pluripotent stem cells has greatly helped to advance our knowledge in this field and enabled to obtain numerous in vitro patient-specific cellular models useful to study the underlying molecular mechanisms and test new therapeutic strategies. A milestone in the research of genetically determined heart disease was the introduction of genomic technologies that provided unparalleled opportunities to explore the genetic architecture of cardiomyopathies, thanks to the generation of isogenic pairs. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the main research that helped elucidate the pathophysiology of the most common genetic cardiomyopathies: hypertrophic, dilated, arrhythmogenic, and left ventricular noncompaction cardiomyopathies. A special focus is provided on the application of gene-editing techniques in understanding key disease characteristics and on the therapeutic approaches that have been tested.
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