Innovation, Impact and the Cardiac Rhythm
We are delighted to welcome Prof Andrew Grace to our February 2024 Innovation Seminar Talk. This month's talk is co-organised by the Maxwell Centre and the Office for Translational Research.
Prof Andrew Grace Professor of Experimental Cardiology, University of Cambridge
About this talk:
Our long-term research has significantly improved many lives alleviating symptoms that have emerged through disturbance of the cardiac rhythm. Achieving technological impact at broad scale has required multidisciplinary teams, substantial investment and commercial engagement. To date there have been a range of exits that have included two ‘unicorns’ one responsible for the subcutaneous implantable defibrillator.
Our ongoing program has two overlapping themes that each take the individual cardiac cell as the ‘fundamental unit of ‘abstraction’.
The first is foundational examining the heartbeat from the perspective of physical biology and has required inputs from an international consortium including centrally the Theory of Condensed Matter Physics Group based at the Cavendish.
The second will have more immediate impact and is designed to obtain frozen samples directly from the human heart in vivo for single cell genetic analysis. The approach requires a specially designed catheter system thus bridging technology and biology.
The cardiac rhythm is genetically determined, physiologically stable and the heart itself is readily accessible with its function quantifiable; taken together it provides an ideal, tractable system for examining disease gene function.
Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/zUPxqtpdrD
