Human heart tissue: structure, function and molecular properties
Research type
Research Study
Full title
A study into the molecular, cellular and tissue properties of human heart samples collected from deceased donors
IRAS ID
347204
Contact name
Cesare M Terracciano
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Structural and electrophysiological changes occur in many cardiac diseases, including heart failure and arrhythmia. Differences exist among different species making animal studies not entirely relevant for the understanding of human pathophysiological events.
Our work focuses on understanding the structure-function relationship in heart disease, in order to discover new treatments for patients. The use of tissue from human hearts removed necessarily during surgery and from healthy donors makes our work effective and translational. The donor hearts are essential as control group and for comparison with diseased hearts. The ability to study human donor hearts will offer unprecedented insight into human heart function and the opportunity to generate new hypotheses of treatments for patients.This project will utilise donor hearts deemed unsuitable for transplantation and donated to research. The NHSBT will be in charge of overseeing all consent and therefore no interaction between us and the donors/families will occur. No identifiable data will be collected, in order to preserve anonymity of donors.
We will execute a vast array of studies to understand physiology (isolated myocardial cells, extracellular matrix, multicellular preparations studied in acute conditions or kept in culture), structural, imaging and biochemical studies.
REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
26/PR/0360
Date of REC Opinion
16 Apr 2026
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion