Searching for a heart failure drug that targets how the heart muscle contracts

Targeting the myofilaments to correct heart muscle dysfunction

Researchers at King’s College are on the hunt for a better, kinder, treatment for heart failure. This is urgently needed. Heart failure affects hundreds of thousands of people in the UK today. It is a progressive condition that can be debilitating and its prognosis is worse than some cancers. Although research has brought about many advances, the treatments for heart failure are still insufficient. Current medicines aren’t good enough, and often cause severe side effects. In this project, researchers at King’s College London hope to pave the way for better medicines for heart failure. In heart failure, the heart muscle can’t contract or relax efficiently to pump enough blood around the body. This leaves people fatigued, weak and breathless. One strategy to treat heart failure is to act directly on the proteins that contract and relax the heart muscle. These researchers will now use cutting-edge technology to identify new molecules that could improve the action and efficiency of these proteins. They will then take the most promising molecules forward to investigate how they work and whether they have potential as a new medicine. It is hoped that this precision approach will pave the way for a much more effective heart failure treatment, with fewer unwanted side effects.