Heart support
November 2006Professor Mark Boyett of the Cardiac Electrophysiology group in the Division of Cardiovascular and Endocrine Sciences has secured over £1m further funding from the British Heart Foundation. The grant will enable his team to continue mapping the molecular structure of the pacemaker and the heart’s conduction system over the next five years.
“The heartbeat is initiated and co-ordinated by an electrical impulse, conducted by the pacemaker and conduction system,” Mark explained. “But ageing and disease can bring significant changes and profound dysfunction, leading to conditions like sick sinus syndrome and heart block and the need for an artificial pacemaker.
“To understand what goes wrong and devise new treatments, we will be developing detailed, three-dimensional computer models. These will enable us to measure changes in the structure and ion channels (the proteins responsible for the electrical impulse), in the pacemaker and conduction systems of young and healthy, aged and diseased hearts.”
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