[iNOVA4Health] Therapeutics for myocardial repair – moving forward ?“

iNOVA4Health Seminar

Title: Therapeutics for myocardial repair – moving forward ?“

Speaker: Joost Sluijter

Affiliation: Professor of Cellular and Translational Cardiology, University Medical Center, Utrecht

Host: Paula M. Alves

Poster

Abstract:

Chronic heart failure is a growing burden in Western world that needs new treatment modalities to repair the damaged myocardium. During the lecture “Therapeutics for myocardial repair – moving forward?“, Prof Dr Joost Sluijter will give a brief overview on the field of regenerative medicine in which cell therapy is used to repair the heart muscle. He will highlight new directions of his group to move this field forward, including both 3D tissue engineering for patch application, in vitro cell modeling, and the use of extracellular vesicles as potential mediators for myocardial repair.

Short Bio:

Prof Dr Joost Sluijter holds a PhD from The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences where he developed work on the area of collagen turnover
in arterial disease. APer his postdoctoral experience he became a group leader at the Experimental Cardiology Laboratory and was also, for several years, associate professor at the department of Cardiology, at the University Medical Center, in Utrecht. Nowadays, he is an associate Professor of Cellular and Translational Cardiology at the department of Cardiology of the same university. His research has been focused on stimulating cardiac regeneration, using innova/ve molecular approaches that improve the diagnosis of acute myocardial damage and can lead to improved recovery of cardiac tissue upon injury. He has also a wide experience in progenitor cell biology and preclinical animal model tes/ng for cardiac injury. He was awarded with several grants and honours on the field of regenerative cardiac therapies.