Episode 07 - A Transcriptional Switch Governs Fibroblast Activation in Heart Disease

Preprints in Motion

This week we discuss BET inhibitors and fibroblast activation with Michael Alexanian @m_alexanian a Postdoctoral researcher at Gladstone Institutes @Gladstoneinst. Michael explains how BET inhibitors have emerged as a potent tool to reversibly interfere with enhancers to promoter signalling. This has been shown to ameliorate heart failure in mouse models and is a highly translatable method of preventing heart failure in humans. We discuss two powerful tools, scRNASeq and scATAC-seq, and how they were used to investigate transcription and epigenetic changes of activated fibroblasts. We then discuss the impact of downstream targets and the impact on drug discovery and the limitation of BET inhibitors. Like every week we also highlight the benefits of preprinting, and increasing the accessibility of data within them to scientists around the world.

Read the full preprint - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.214874v1.full

Other links

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03674-1

This episode was produced by Emma Wilson and edited by John D Howard.

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Produced by JEmJ Productions (find us on Twitter: Jonny @JACoates, Emma @ELWilson92, John @JohnDHoward8) and generously supported by ASAPbio (https://asapbio.org | @asapbio_).