A public lecture hosted by the School of Physiology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience

Talk abstract: Have you ever felt your heart race and wondered how it beats? The heart is an incredible organ that works non-stop, beating over 2.5 billion times by the time you reach the age of 80! However, in some young people, inherited conditions disrupt the heart’s normal rhythm, causing serious abnormal beating patterns called arrhythmias and even sudden cardiac death. In this talk, I will explain how electrical signals coordinate the heartbeat, and how inherited conditions can cause these arrhythmias. I will also explain how our lab uses cell-based models, including engineering ‘mini-hearts in a dish’ from stem cells, to better understand these conditions. Finally, I will discuss our efforts to improve these models and to develop new approaches to prevent life-threatening arrhythmias. If you are curious about how the heart works, or are interested in medical research more generally, please come along!