After the left ventricle contracts the heart, it needs to rest effectively to prepare to replenish blood and supply the body on the next stroke. A growing number of patients – including almost all patients with heart failure – suffer from restlessness, which is part of a clinical syndrome known as diastolic dysfunction. Currently, there are no cures for weak rest.
A team of researchers from Wayne State University School of Medicine led by Charles Chung, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology, recently received a $ 1,894,271 grant from the National Institute of Heart, Lung, and Blood for the -National Institutes of Health to deal with those in crisis. need for new drug targets and diagnostic indices for diastolic dysfunction using novel biomechanical experiments that can eventually be translated into clinical use.
According to Chung, the project was inspired by his research team discovering that the heart muscle has a fast connection to how fast the muscles can relax. The project will use specific experiments and imaging techniques to link the mechanical properties of the heart to models of heart failure occurring in patients.
The main focus of my laboratory research is to understand how the heart muscle moves at the end of a contraction and how this movement can accelerate the contraction of a force, or rest, of the muscle. Key muscle proteins called myosin, actin and titin control the force of each stroke. When the heart muscles contract, myosin binds to actin to generate force. Our lab is trying to find out if movement – and how fast the movement happens – causes myosin to break out of actin faster and cause it to move. the muscles relax faster. “
Charles Chung, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Psychology, Wayne State University School of Medicine
Other proteins such as titin can affect myosin, which is not only the most naturally occurring protein, which acts as a spring or rubber band within the muscle. The use of titin with varying degrees of stiffness means that the team can test whether a “stiff spring” improves the muscle’s response (ie how myosin separates) when moved.
To “see” what these proteins do when muscle moves, Wayne State’s team is collaborating with researchers from the Collaborative Biological Access Team (BioCAT) at Argonne National Laboratories and Institute of Technologies Illinois. The combined experience of BioCAT and Chung’s lab will allow the team to use -ray diffraction to study how myosin changes position during living and beating moving heart muscles.
Chung studies on proteins within the heart muscle may help patients with diastolic dysfunction.
“We are working with colleagues in the Department of Internal Medicine at Wayne State including Luis Afonso, MD, head of cartography, and Noreen Rossi, MD, a professor in the Department of Nephrology and Medicine. a researcher at the VA, “Chung said. “Our work will look at how western dietary staples such as fructose and salt can alter heart movement and inhibit relaxation. We are also exploring how our laboratory studies might improve translate into the clinics, where Afonso and Rossi regularly see patients suffering from diastolic disorder. “
Source:
Wayne State University – Office of the Vice President for Research