Heart diseases remain the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups worldwide. The top risk factors for heart disease include familial history (genetic mutations), aging, unhealthy lifestyle (smoking, alcohol addition, high fat diet etc.), obesity, etc. However, the studies of the pathological mechanisms of these risk factors in the human heart was greatly humbled by the lack of standardized research models, as human cardiac cells are limited resources, and genetically modified animals show significant species variations. As a result of our incomplete understanding of pathological mechanisms, the current treatment of heart disease mostly focuses on relieving symptoms, rather than targeting the underlying molecular basis.
Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have provided us an exceptional research platform for the mechanistic studies of cardiac diseases in human originated cardiac cells. The researches at Wu lab take advantage of modern stem cell, physiology, genome-editing, and omics technologies to 1) Dissect the molecular mechanisms of inherited dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies; 2) Understand the molecular mechanism of aging in heart cells; 3) Study how environmental risk factors contribute to the remodeling of cardiomyocyte. The long-term goal of our research is to gain a deep mechanistic understanding of the pathogenesis in diseased cardiac cells, and to develop novel molecular tools and compounds to rectify the regulation during the process.