Fluorescent heart tissue

One morning my heart fibrillated, I lost consciousness, was given a shock and was allowed to go on living. I was 36 years old.

Testimonial - Axel Verstrael

Testimonial

Axel Verstrael lost his father at a young age and was himself diagnosed with Brugada syndrome, an inherited cardiac disorder, after a sudden cardiac arrest with successful resuscitation. He immediately had a defibrillator implanted and it has saved him several times. "I'm a bit of a lucky guy. A lucky man in the sense that the Brugada syndrome was identified and it’s agreed that in this country you then get a defibrillator. This is also in me and has had to intervene a few times, but that also gives me a kind of security. And it’s important to have that certainty to deal with all the other uncertainties. I’m looking for my own manual and your team can help me put together my manual."

Inherited cardiac arrhythmias and heart muscle diseases

Research

'Footballer (22) dies of cardiac arrest on the field’, 'Young cyclist (28) succumbed to sudden cardiac death': these are sadly all too common headlines and often underlying them is an inherited cardiac arrhythmia or heart muscle disease. However, these conditions aren’t only found in athletes. What these have in common is that you can go through life as completely healthy until suddenly, without any prior symptom or warning, your heart starts 'fibrillating'. The electrical signal is then no longer transmitted correctly, causing all your heart muscle cells to contract at random and stop pumping blood around. Apart from implanting a defibrillator - itself a risky operation and therefore not performed lightly - there is no medication available that can effectively prevent sudden death in these patients. Professor Maaike Alaerts explains, "I myself have lost two very good friends to sudden cardiac death. One of them had been diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia and even the genetic cause was also known, but that didn’t prevent the sudden death. New therapies that can do that would be a real breakthrough."

In search of new therapies via fluorescent heart tissue

Professor Maaike Alaerts and her team turn blood cells from patients and healthy individuals into stem cells, which can then be differentiated into the various cell types present in the human heart and consequently grown together into mini pieces of heart tissue. They are investigating the best way to genetically modify these cells to contain fluorescent proteins, allowing their function to be monitored with a specialised microscope. Professor Maaike Alaerts explains, "In this way, we can create plenty of small pieces of fluorescent 'diseased' heart tissue and test the effect of a whole range of drugs or, for example, gene therapy on a large scale. Hopefully. this will enable us to find much-needed new therapies for inherited heart diseases and really make a difference."

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