Project: Fibrosis Treatment by Enhancer Targeting
| Acronym | FIBER |
| Duration | 01/05/2019 - 30/04/2021 |
| Project Topic | Heart failure severely affects patients’ quality of life and is a major cause of mortality of adult women and men. In a failing heart, cells named fibroblasts become activated and produce large amounts of scar tissue, a pathological process known as fibrosis. Recent studies have shed light on how to distinguish fibroblasts from other cell types and where the increased numbers of fibroblasts observed in heart failure come from. This project aims to identify interactions among genome regulatory sequences that drive fibroblast activation in heart disease. Such “epigenetic” changes are potentially reversible; hence, this may provide the scientific and medical communities with novel therapeutic targets against the progression of heart failure. To achieve this, fibroblasts from a mouse model of heart failure as well as patient tissue samples will be analysed. We will then test the therapeutic potential of disrupting candidate regulatory sequence interactions in fibroblasts in mouse and human engineered heart tissue (EHT) heart failure models. |
| Network | ERA-CVD |
| Call | Joint Transnational Call for Proposal 2018 (JTC 2018) |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | INSERM UMR1251 - Marseille Medical Genetics | Coordinator | France |
| 2 | IRCCS Istituto Clinico Humanitas | Partner | Italy |
| 3 | Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares | Partner | Spain |
| 4 | University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf | Partner | Germany |