8 June 2020 Prestigious Leducq grant for Eva van Rooij in a multinational consortium Back to news Many types of heart disease are caused by a mistake or mutation in the DNA. This includes the deadliest ones such as heart failure and arrhythmias. Targeting the mostly heritable mutations by genome editing is a novel approach to address the unmet need for therapy in affected patients in the future. A large, multinational consortium with researchers from Europe and the United States has been awarded a Transatlantic Network of Excellence grant from the Leducq Foundation, to advance genome editing for the treatment of heart failure from bench to bedside. The consortium is comprised of researchers from Chicago (Elizabeth McNally), Dallas (Eric Olson), Göttingen (Rabea Hinkel and Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann), London (Mauro Giacca), Utrecht (Eva van Rooij), and Worcester (Erik Sontheimer). The group of Eva van Rooij will contribute its core expertise in the use of heart cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) and small animal models of heart disease for the refinement and early preclinical testing of genome editing therapeutics.
