'Heart-in-a-dish' paves way for personalized treatment for heart failure
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McGill researchers have developed a new way to study why the same heart failure treatment can help some patients recover while others continue to get worse.
Combining "heart-in-a-dish" technology with advanced microscopy, the approach makes it possible to identify differences between patients that would probably be missed using conventional methods.
The pilot study helps pave the way for more personalized treatment for dilated cardiomyopathy, a serious form of heart disease. Only about half of patients survive five years after diagnosis. Despite major differences in how the disease progresses, patients typically receive the same standard treatments. The work is published in the journal npj Biomedical Innovations.
"We finally have tools that can help us move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to heart failure," said senior author Terry Hébert, a professor in McGill University's Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
From blood sample to beating heart
Heart-in-a-dish begins with a blood sample. Researchers reprogram blood cells into stem cells and then transform them into heart muscle cells carrying the patient's genetic makeup. Those cells are assembled into miniature beating heart tissues that allow scientists to simulate the disease in the lab and test potential treatments.
For this study, the team used cells from two patients with dilated cardiomyopathy and two healthy volunteers. A powerful microscope installed at McGill in 2024 made it possible to study the miniature hearts at the individual cell level.
The study was co-led by Giada Castagnola and Diego Loggia, Ph.D. students in McGill's Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, along with colleagues at McGill and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.
Notably, they found that cells from the female patient responded to a hormone that was not expected to improve heart function. The response wasn't seen in the male patient or healthy volunteers.
"This is exactly the kind of difference we hope to uncover," said Hébert. "While preliminary, the finding suggests a potential therapeutic target and could help improve our understanding of differences in heart disease between women and men that have long been understudied."
The team is now expanding the study, with heart cells already grown from samples collected from 40 people.
"As we expand this work to more patients, we expect to uncover biological differences that could ultimately change how heart failure is treated," said Hébert.
More information
Giada Castagnola et al., Evaluating and comparing the signalling and functional landscape of hiPSC-CMs derived from patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, npj Biomedical Innovations (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s44385-026-00111-8
Key medical concepts
Cardiomyopathy, DilatedMyocytes, Cardiac
Clinical categories
Cardiology Provided by McGill University Who's behind this story?
Gaby Clark
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