Laboratory of Cardiovascular Physiology

Pre-clinical research summary

In collaboration with Prof. Jack Wong and Prof. Tong Liu's research groups, Gary's team has elucidated the pathophysiology of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, which are important conditions leading to thromboembolic events and sudden cardiac death, respectively. The team has unravelled the novel mechanisms by which immunosuppressive, anti-lipidemic and anti-diabetic medications exert protective effects against atrial fibrillation (Liu,..., Tse, Li and Liu, Cardiovasc Ther. 2017 Oct;35(5)). Using a combination of genetic, pharmacological, biochemical and imaging approaches, his team has identified reductions in oxidative stress and prevention of mitochondrial dysfunction are critical to achieve reverse remodelling of the atria (Zhang,...Tse, Li and Liu, J Am Heart Assoc. 2017 May 15;6(5). pii: e005945; Yang,...Tse, Li and Liu, J Am Heart Assoc. 2018 May 2;7(10):e008807; Shao et al., Cardiovasc Diabetol. 2019,18(1):165. doi: 10.1186/s12933-019-0964-4; Wang...Tse, Li, Liu, Fu., J Physiol Biochem. 2020 Oct 21. doi: 10.1007/s13105-020-00769-7).

Using Langendorff mouse models (reviewed in Yeo,...and Tse, J Basic Clin Physiol Pharmacol. 2017 May 1;28(3):191-200), his team has elucidated the relative contributions of gap junction and sodium channel function to cardiac conduction, and the relationship between conduction, repolarization, their heterogeneities, and dynamic substrates of electrical restitution to atrial and ventricular arrhythmogenicity (Tse et al., PLoS One. 2016 Feb 12;11(2):e0148858). . Of note, his group was the first to validate the use of the S1S2 protocol against the gold standard of dynamic pacing for assessing electrical restitution in mice. The team's recent efforts have focused on the use of complex analysis to interrogate data derived from action potential time series. Under the directions of Prof. Kamalan Jeevaratnam's group in the United Kingdom, it was found that three dimensional restitution analysis of sinus rhythm electrocardiograms followed by application of the k-NN classifier algorithm with matching using synthetic minority oversampling technique could be used to predict paroxysmal atrial fibrillation in equine athletes (Huang, Alexeenko, Huang, Tse, Marr and Jeevaratnam, Function. 2020. doi:10.1093/function/zqaa031).