Genetic medicines aim straight for the heart

Science & Nature

Promising gene therapy, gene editing and antisense oligonucleotide approaches herald a new era of cardiac medicine for patients with certain so-far intractable heart conditions.

In addition, a trio of agenda-setting papers from the labs of Eric Olson at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a complementary study from Christine Seidman’s lab at Harvard Medical School have shown that CRISPR–Cas9 editing, base editing and prime editing can all be harnessed to correct genetic models of cardiac disease in mice. Technical proof of concept has now been established for tackling cardiomyopathies caused by mutations in the MYH7 and the RBM20 genes, as well as for disrupting a pathological signaling mechanism caused by chronic overactivation of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase IIδ that is present in many patients with heart failure.

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  1. Dublin, Ireland

    Cormac Sheridan

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Sheridan, C. Genetic medicines aim straight for the heart.
Nat Biotechnol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-01745-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-01745-4

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Cormac Sheridan

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