The BHF-Turing Cardiovascular Data Science Awards (First Call): Quantifying functional co-variation in calcium handling proteins in cardiac myocytes (joint funding with The Alan Turing Institute)
Data scientists are developing ways to identify people who are vulnerable to heart side-effects from certain medicines. With every heartbeat, electricity travels across the heart and activates its muscle cells to contract. The chemical signal involved in this process is calcium, which is released from stores inside cells upon the electrical signal. It is this release of calcium that activates muscle fibres to contract the cell. The calcium is then reabsorbed into its stores, causing the heart to relax and complete the heartbeat cycle. In some people this process can be disrupted by certain prescription medicines, causing potentially dangerous side-effects. We’re not yet good at predicting who is likely to be affected, but Dr Steven Niederer and his team are working to change that. The movement of calcium around the cell is controlled by many different types of proteins, but the processes can differ slightly from one person to the next. We are not yet able to identify differences in how calcium movement is controlled in different people. This Turing Award will allow the team to develop new ways of understanding and describing how calcium is moved in the heart, and how this varies between individuals. With this information, computers will be able to predict the effects of drugs on the heartbeat of each person. This will allow a tailored approach to prescribing and prevent potentially dangerous heart complications.
Project details
| Grant amount | £49,310 |
|---|---|
| Grant type | Chairs & Programme Grants |
| Application type | Special Project |
| Start Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Duration | 1 year, 6 months |
| Reference | SP/18/6/33805 |
| Status | In Progress |
