Grant: CIHR Fellowship

The healthy heart is able to produce energy effectively and from a wide variety of molecules, such as fat, glucose, and amino acids. In the context of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), the cardiac muscle becomes less efficient at producing energy, while needing more energy to pump blood through the body, creating a double burden. Some clinical trials have tested drugs to improve the energy use of the heart of patients affected by DCM, but they did not produce good outcomes. One important reason for this failing is that DCM patients are very heterogeneous. Indeed, there is a wide variety of causes, presentations, and evolution of the disease. The aim of this project is to improve our understanding of the effect of DCM on cardiac metabolism, including its heterogeneity. The first step will be to create mathematical models, called genome-scale metabolic models (GEM) that represents the metabolism of each patient's heart. Then, we will compare how patients are different from healthy controls to find which parts of the metabolism are affected by the disease. The second step will be to compare DCM patients between one another to identify groups of patients based on their cardiac metabolism. This study is important because DCM is a cause of heart failure, which has a high mortality rate and a big impact on patients quality of life. A better understanding of the way DCM affects cardiac metabolism could lead to better treatment options, including drugs that are tailored to specific subgroups of patients.