Current Research and Scholarly Interests
My laboratory's overall goal is to (i) understand the mechanisms of right heart failure in children and adults with congenital heart disease and (ii) to develop biomarkers as a plasma signature of myocardial events to better understand the mechanisms of heart failure, improve monitoring of disease progression, early detection of heart failure and risk-stratification.
We have focused on tetralogy of Fallot population and single ventricle heart disease. As the survival continues to improve, so also has the incidence of heart failure. However, the underlying cellular mechanisms of heart failure are poorly understood as a result of which no targeted therapy is available. Since it is not possible to obtain heart muscle biopsies routinely on patients, we have taken a novel strategy of using Multi-Omics to better understand disease mechanisms and to follow patients over time comparing their Omics signature to themselves thereby personalizing their care. The goal is to create a targeted biomarker panel for clinical utility to be used in conjunction with imaging data to improve overall prediction of risk. Based on our work to date, we are also interested in understanding myocardial mitochondrial and vascular dysfunction as these have the potential to serve as novel therapeutic targets.
