Gene Therapy for Heart Failure: An Investigational Treatment That is Coming of Age

Abstract

Correspondence: Dr D. Mancini, Division of Cardiology, Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, 622 West 168th Street, PH1273, New York, NY 10032, USA E-mail: dmm31@columbia.edu Over the past 2 decades, despite advances in the management of heart failure with the addition of highly effective drugs and devices, the number of heart failure patients continues to increase. Heart failure is the end result of a variety of disease states including coronary artery disease, hypertension, alcohol abuse, and infections. Irrespective of the etiology of heart failure, many changes in the genetic expression of contractile proteins occur in the cardiac myocyte that may create effective targets for molecular therapies.1 Whether gene therapy can improve cardiac function by normalizing gene expression of contractile proteins is an avenue of active clinical research in the 21st century. In this brief review, the early state of gene therapy for heart failure will be described.