Most patients with an inherited heart condition known as
arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) don’t know
they have a problem until they’re in their early 20s. The lack of symptoms at
younger ages makes it very difficult for researchers to study how ARVD/C
evolves or to develop treatments.
A new stem cell-based technology created by 2012 Nobel Prize
winner Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., helps solve this problem. With this
technology, researchers can generate heart muscle cells from a patient’s own
skin cells. However, these newly made heart cells are mostly immature. That
raises questions about whether or not they can be used to mimic a disease that
occurs in adulthood.