NICE-HF

Heart failure is a multifactorial disease with high socio-economic burden. Although, much medical progress has been achieved in the past, the control of the disease specifically in patients with heart failure due to non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (NICMP) has not been accomplished. Besides conventional drug therapy, device-assisted prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and progression towards terminal heart failure, current treatment options are limited and no causal individualized approach is available to date. Thus, the aim of the integrated project will be to investigate novel risk demonstrators including biomarkers, biosignals, cardiac imaging and genetic determinants in NICMP to identify patients at risk and to control disease progression on an individualized aspect. In a pilot study based on a pre-existing cohort of patients suffering from NICMP, relevant demonstrators will be identified to investigate the potential impact on prognostic outcome. Complex bioinformatic models will be developed involving additional expertise of bioinformatics and system biology. In addition to personalized diagnostic aspects, novel therapeutic strategies for patients with heart failure will be explored. For example, we found that partially restoring the reading frame of the exon encoding for structural protein Titin (TTN) in a mouse model of NICMP corrects the dysfunctional protein and improves cardiac function. Thus, our proposal aims to improve outcome by developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic options for personalized patient care (theragnostics