"Targeting Junctophilin-2 for Heart Failure Gene Therapy"

Speaker:

Long-Sheng Song, M.D., M.S.
Professor of Internal Medicine
Edith King Pearson Chair in Cardiovascular Research
Cardiovascular Medicine
University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine

About Long-Sheng Song:

Dr. Song received his medical education at North China University of Science and Technology in Tangshan, Hebei, China. His research interests include understanding the mechanisms underlying heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias, with a goal of developing therapeutic strategies for these diseases.

In his lab, he uses high-resolution confocal imaging, patch-clamp electrophysiology, biochemistry, cellular and mollecular biology, as well as novel genetic mouse models. His investigations have established a new paradigm for heart failure development and progression by linking junctophilin-2 dysregulation to cardiomyocyte T-tubule ultrastructural remodeling and E-C coupling dysfunction. His team has unraveled two distinct mechanisms underlying junctophilin-2 dysregulation: 1) proteolysis of junctophilin-2 by calpain; and 2) mis-trafficking of junctophilin-2 to the cell periphery mediated by microtubule densification.

A recent major discovery is that the E-C coupling structural protein junctophilin-2 encodes a stress-adaptive transcriptional regulator, which serves as an important protective mechanism in antagonizing pathological remodeling in response to cardiac stress.