Sanford Burnham Prebys Assistant Professor Alexandre Colas has been awarded $1.9 million by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to discover drugs that restore normal cardiac rhythm in atrial fibrillation. The four-year award will enable Colas to use stem cell technology with a novel high-resolution screening platform to identify small molecules that have the potential to revert arrhythmias.
Atrial fibrillation is an irregular and often rapid heart rate that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications. Available treatments are costly, and they have serious side effects and long-term toxicities.
