Cardiac Electrophysiology and Pharmacology
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Pharmacology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2023) | Viewed by 16965
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Na/Ca exchanger; Ca handling; cardiac electrophysiology; arrhythmias
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cardiac arrhyhtmia is a leading casue of morbidity and mortality; therefore, large efforts in cardiac research have gone into finding appropriate antiarrhythmic drugs in the past few decades. Classical antiarrhythmic therapy includes the application of several Na+-, K+-, and Ca2+-channel blockers. However, the pharmacological interventions are still hampered because the compounds often exert lack of selectivity and/or proarrhyhtmic side-effects. A further important aspect of the unsatisfactory pharmacological treatments is the lack of sufficient knowledge of the underlying mechanisms in several diseases. Better understanding of cardiac electrophysiology, both in health and in disease, could improve the effectiveness of the pharmacological treatments and may decrease the proarrhytmic risk.
Accordingly, better understanding of the Ca2+ handling in health and disease, exploring its regulatory mechanisms, its role in the arrhyhtmogenesis, and the deep details of Ca2+ mismanagement may improve the development of novel antiarrhyhtmic strategies. Pharmacological modification of the ryanodine receptor, the Na+/Ca2+ exchanger, the sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase or the calmoduline-kinase II was the object of intensive research in the past few years. Similarly, pharmacological modulation of electrical properties of heart, including pacemaker, atrial, ventricular, and Purkinje cells, as well as understanding the molecular biological regulatory pathways, also has critical importance for improvements in ideal pharmacological strategies. For instance, pharmacological inhibition of the Ca2+-activated K+ current has emerged to be a leading novel target to modulate pacemaking or action potential duration in non-pacemaking tissues in various diseases. Novel techniques, such as optogenetics, hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes, or computatitonal modeling, could help to explore the pharmacological and physiological properties of ion channels that are difficult to measure using conventional techniques, such as Na+-channels or background channels, or that lack appropiately specific inhibitors, such as transient outward current (Ito). Engineering and comprehensive analyis of novel, more specific pharmacological compounds are also necessary to specifically characterize an ion channel function and provide novel strategies for pharmacological interventions.
This Special Issue is designed for those fields of cardiac electrophysiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology that are critically important to improve the efficacy and safety of antiarrhythmic treatment.
Dr. Norbert Nagy
Dr. Norbert Jost
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- heart
- arrhythmia
- Ca2+ handling
- ion channels
- electrophysiology
- pharmacology
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