We only have one heart, a vital organ, our inner fire. However, it can be severely damaged – in some cases in a fatal way – by unwanted side effects of otherwise life-saving drugs. Our research’s challenge is to find strategies to protect the heart during chemotherapy, to reduce the burden of future heart problems in cancer survivors. We want to identify what makes some people genetically more resistant to heart damage, to reproduce this mechanism in more sensitive people, so that chemotherapy can be safe for the heart, for all.
reNEW research
We select patients who developed heart damage after chemotherapy and others – matched by age, sex and treatment – who didn’t. From their cells, we create induced pluripotent stem cells and turn them into the heart’s main cell types, carrying each patient’s own DNA. We can then build a 3D mini-heart in the lab and expose it to a chemotherapeutic drug like doxorubicin, comparing how cells from different people respond. This reveals which cell types, interactions and genetics protect some hearts, so we can apply them to protect others.
Image description
A microscopy image of a 3D hiPSC-derived mini-heart with heart contracting cells, vasculature and fibroblasts.
Credits
Dr. Giulia Campostrini, Senior Researcher, Mummery/Bellin lab, reNEW Leiden.
