Cardiac regulatory mechanisms: from cardiac mechanisms to novel therapeutic approaches

Abstract

The GRC brought together over 180 scientists from different disciplines who discussed how fundamental molecular processes can be leveraged for therapeutic intervention using cutting-edge approaches. The conference covered recent advances in understanding cardiac function/dysfunction in the areas of heart failure, metabolic disease, cardiac signal transduction, regulation by non-coding DNA/RNA, calcium signalling and myocyte/non-myocyte communication. For this special issue, conference participants contributed 12 symposium reviews and two original research articles on six different scientific topics that relate basic physiology of the heart to cardiovascular diseases. The first set of reviews and original articles discusses aberrant calcium signalling and arrhythmia mechanisms. The symposium review by Wleklinski, Kannankeril and Knollmann introduces the concept of pathological calcium