Harnessing Investigative Genomics in Heart Failure

Abstract

sudden cardiac death (SCD) was a major health problem and constituted an unsolved challenge due to our failure to determine its unexplained cause of death in teens and young adults. Now we know that most of those deaths were a result of heterogeneous genetic heart disorders, either structural cardiomyopathies or arrhythmogenic abnormalities leading to heart failure (HF). To some extent, developments in biology helped delineate functions of genetic elements however; the complexity could not be fully grasped. Systems biology is attempting to enable understanding the complex conditions such as HF since it can integrate observations stemming from genes and their respective products and thus could allow the study of cell’s organization and its physiological behavior [1]. Concomitantly, a dramatic change in cardiovascular medicine has witnessed a sizable reduction in patients’ morbidity and mortality. However, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) still remain a serious concern globally and disappointingly its manifestation has considerably changed [2]. This shifting landscape presents many challenges and opportunities including application of investigative genomics along with the latest approaches such as next generation of sequencing (NGS) [3]. These options could help develop newer generation of tests for diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic interventions to monitor both acute coronary injuries and chronic heart diseases. The development of such tests should essentially take into account the role of genes or their encoded protein products not only to assess the risk of CVDs but also to treat patients accordingly.