Could switching on PKD improve the heart’s ability to pump after heart failure?

To what extent can PKD-induced phosphorylation of cardiac myofibrils correct the dysfunction of myofibril contraction in the failing human heart?

Professor Jonathan Kentish and his team at King’s College London are working out if switching on an enzyme called protein kinase D (PKD) could help the heart to pump blood around the body after heart failure. In some people who have had a heart attack, their heart muscle is damaged so much that it leads to heart failure. Here the heart becomes weak and cannot pump blood around the body effectively. In heart failure, the proteins inside the cells of the heart change, including chemical changes to ‘contractile’ proteins that provide the force for the heartbeat. In this project, Professor Kentish wants to understand how these chemical changes affect the ability of these proteins to generate force. He will find out if switching on PKD can reverse these changes and increase the heart’s pumping ability in heart failure patients. If this research discovers that active PKD reverses the detrimental changes occurring in the contractile proteins during heart failure, it could reveal a role for drugs that switch on PKD. These new drugs could be a new way to treat people with heart failure.