Aug 20, 2020
Two guests join the show today: Dr. Clive Svendsen, Director of
the Cedars-Sinai Board of Governors Regenerative Medicine
Institute, and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Arun Sharma.
In this episode, you will discover:
Dr. Clive Svendsen chairs the task force for
COVID-19 at Cedars-Sinai. In the early patients with the
viral infection responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, symptoms
of heart problems were detected, which gave rise to the
question of whether these symptoms were secondary to the infection,
or indicated that the heart cells themselves were infected by the
virus.
At the time, Dr. Svendsen and Dr. Sharma were studying the use of
stem cells to model and treat disease. In the unique position of
being able to mass produce human heart cells by the billions in the
lab, they set out to determine whether heart cells are susceptible
to the SARS-coV-2 virus.
The verdict? They found that heart cells are indeed susceptible to infection by SARS-coV-2. They discuss what they’re learning from additional analyses of genetic profile and function, such as the finding that in patients with heart failure, the expression of the ACE2 receptor (the same receptor associated with the COVID-19 virus) is upregulated. This could explain why some people with some form of heart failure may be more susceptible to the virus that's responsible for COVID-19. In addition, it explains tissue-specific differences to susceptibility to the virus.
Dr. Svendsen and Dr. Sharma dive into the details of all of this
and more, including the activation of the innate immune response by
cardiomyocytes that are infected, the different responses to this
infectious virus, the type of research they’re doing to determine
how well the virus is proliferating on cardiomyocytes, where their
research is headed, and much more.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK