Cardiovascular disease is the major killer worldwide with Congenital Heart Disease affecting 1 in 100 live born babies in Australia. Our lab is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms and developmental processes orchestrating normal heart development and the translation of this knowledge to better understand congenital and adult heart disease including cardiac regeneration.
In the del Monte-Nieto lab, we believe that only understanding the cellular and molecular processes controlling normal heart development will help us to identify the causes leading to cardiac disease. This knowledge will allow us to design efficient genetic screening methods and therapies to ameliorate disease sequelae, including new therapies to improve cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction, our major killer.
On this regard, our recent research has established a new model for ventricular trabeculation integrating for the first time endocardial and myocardial cell behaviours, and extracellular matrix remodelling. The study not only changed the way we understand the normal formation of the cardiac chambers, it also generated new insights to understand the causes leading to Non-Compaction Cardiomyopathy, the 3rd most commonly diagnose cardiomyopathy in adults.
In the seminar, we will discuss the different research directions of the lab on heart development, disease and regeneration.