Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Ahsan Husain

Regrowing adult heart muscle

In adulthood, our hearts generally can’t grow again in response to injury. Emory cardiology researchers Ahsan Husain and Nawazish Naqvi and their colleagues have been chipping away at this biological edifice in animal models, demonstrating that it is possible to remove constraints that prevent the heart from growing new muscle cells.

Husain and Naqvi’s teams accomplished this by combining the thyroid hormone T3 — already FDA approved — with siRNA-based inhibition of an enzyme called DUSP5. Their latest paper, published in the journal Theranostics, applies the combination in an animal model of drug-induced heart failure.

The anticancer drug doxorubicin is sometimes known as the “red devil”

The anticancer drug doxorubicin is notorious for its cardiotoxicity, yet it is a mainstay of treatment for breast cancer in adults and several types of cancer in children. Cardiotoxicity affects a fraction of breast cancer patients treated with doxorubicin (20 percent in some studies) and severely impacts mortality and quality of life.

In the mouse model, doxorubicin generates severe heart failure, with a 40 percent drop in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF), a measure of the heart’s pumping capacity. In response to the combination of T3 and DUSP5 siRNA, a large increase in LVEF is seen. The researchers also report that the treatment has a marked effect on the health of the animals, restoring their activity levels, grooming and posture. See the video for an example of a mouse heart treated with the T3/DUSP5 siRNA combination.

The results are potentially applicable to other situations when doctors would want to regrow or repair cardiac muscle. Husain reports plans for a clinical study in patients with drug-induced or other forms of heart failure, supported by a generous gift from the Atlanta-based ten Broeke Family Foundation.

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Posted on March 25, 2021 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Heart Leave a comment

Mini-monsters of cardiac regeneration

After a heart attack, cardiac muscle cells die because they are deprived of blood and oxygen. In an adult human, those cells represent a dead end. They can’t change their minds about what kind of cell they’ve become.

In newborn babies, as well as in adult fish, the heart can regenerate after injury. Why can’t the human heart be more fishy? At Emory, researcher Jinhu Wang is seeking answers, which could guide the development of regenerative therapies.

“If we want to understand cardiac regeneration in mammals, we can look at it from the viewpoint of the fish,” he says.

A lot of research in regenerative medicine focuses on the potential of stem cells, which have not committed to become one type of tissue, such as brain, skin or muscle. Wang stresses that the ability of zebrafish hearts to regenerate does not originate from stem cells. It comes from the regular tissues. The cells are induced to go back in time and multiply, although their capacity to regenerate may vary with the age of the animal, he says.

Jinhu Wang, PhD manages an impressive set of fish tanks

Zebrafish hearts are simpler than mammals’: theirs have just two chambers, while ours have four. Nobel Prize winner Christiane Nusslein-Vollhard has promoted the use of zebrafish as a genetic model in developmental biology. Its embryos are transparent, making it easy to spot abnormalities.

Wang’s fish room in the basement of Emory’s Rollins Research Center contains more than 1000 fish tanks, with different sizes of cage for various ages and an elaborate water recycling system. The adult fish eat brine shrimp that are stored in vats in one corner of the lab. Read more

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Quinn Eastman in Heart 1 Comment

Lab Land looking back: Top ten themes for 2014

It is a privilege to work at Emory and learn about and report on so much quality biomedical research. I started to make a top 10 for 2014 and had too many favorites. After diverting some of these topics into the 2015 crystal ball, I corralled them into themes.
1. Cardiac cell therapy
PreSERVE AMI clinical trial led by cardiologist Arshed Quyyumi. Emory investigators developing a variety of approaches to cardiac cell therapy.
2. Mobilizing the body’s own regenerative potential
Ahsan Husain’s work on how young hearts grow. Shan Ping Yu’s lab using parathyroid hormone bone drug to mobilize cells for stroke treatment.
3. Epigenetics
Many colors in the epigenetic palette (hydroxymethylation). Valproate – epigenetic solvent (anti-seizure –> anti-cancer). Methylation in atherosclerosis model (Hanjoong Jo). How to write conservatively about epigenetics and epigenomics.
4. Parkinson’s disease therapeutic strategies
Container Store (Gary Miller, better packaging for dopamine could avoid stress to neurons).
Anti-inflammatory (Malu Tansey, anti-TNF decoy can pass blood-brain barrier).
5. Personal genomics/exome sequencing
Rare disease diagnosis featured in the New Yorker. Three–part series on patient with GRIN2A mutation.
6. Neurosurgeons, like Emory’s Robert Gross and Costas Hadjpanayis, do amazing things
7. Fun vs no fun
Fun = writing about Omar from The Wire in the context of drug discovery.
No fun (but deeply moving) = talking with patients fighting glioblastoma.
8. The hypersomnia field is waking up
Our Web expert tells me this was Lab Land’s most widely read post last year.
9. Fine-tuning approaches to cancer
Image guided cancer surgery (Shuming Nie/David Kooby). Cancer immunotherapy chimera (Jacques Galipeau). Fine tuning old school chemo drug cisplatin (Paul Doetsch)
10. Tie between fructose effects on adolescent brain (Constance Harrell/Gretchen Neigh) and flu immunology (embrace the unfamiliar! Ali Ellebedy/Rafi Ahmed)
Posted on January 7, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Thyroid makes young mouse hearts grow

The entire heart muscle in young children may hold untapped potential for regeneration, new research suggests.

For decades, scientists believed that after a child’s first few days of life, cardiac muscle cells did not divide. Instead, the assumption was that the heart could only grow by having the muscle cells become larger.

Cracks were already appearing in that theory. But new findings in mice, published May 8 in Cell, provide a dramatic counterexample — with implications for the treatment of congenital heart disorders in humans. Read more

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment