Research Topics
The research group originates from the fruitful history of electrophysiological experiments which were performed at the Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University from 1960s.
We are currently dealing with various clinically-relevant aspects of cardiac and neural electrophysiology, mostly focusing on drug-channel interactions, inherited cardiac channelopathies, characteristics and impact of t-tubules on the function of cardiomyocytes, and changes of neural excitability associated with neuropsychiatric diseases.
To record electrical activity of primary animal and patient-specific hiPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and neurons or human brain slices, we use the patch clamp and/or microelectrode array techniques. In the case of cardiomyocytes, the experimental analysis is followed by mathematical modelling on either animal or human cardiac cell models that we have developed.
Areas of Interest:
- Drug-induced changes of electrophysiological properties of cardiomyocytes – changes in ionic currents and action potential configuration
- Functional impact of variants in cardiac ionic channel genes associated with inherited arrhythmias (g. long QT syndrome, Brugada syndrome, idiopathic ventricular fibrillation)
- Functional impact of cardiac t-tubules, capacity of the t-tubular membrane, rate of ion diffusion between t-tubules and extracellular space
- Changes in excitability of neurons due to neuropsychiatric diseases (g. epilepsy, Alzheimer disease, schizophrenia)
Established Methods:
- whole cell patch clamp measurement on ventricular (B) and atrial (C) cardiac cells enzymatically isolated from hearts of small laboratory animals perfused according to Langendorff (A);
- whole cell patch clamp measurement on a cell line transiently expressing human ionic channels (D);
- whole cell patch clamp measurement on cardiomyocytes enzymatically isolated from dysfunctional hearts of patients who underwent heart transplantation, perfused according to Langendorff (E, F), eventually on analogical cells isolated from the healthy pig heart;
- whole cell patch clamp and multielectrode array measurements on human cardiomyocytes differentiated from pluripotent stem cells;
- mathematical modelling (G) – human, rat, guinea-pig, and mouse ventricular cell models are available; new models are being developed;
- whole cell patch clamp (H) and/or multielectrode array (I) measurements on human neurons differentiated from pluripotent stem cells, on primary rat neural cultures, and on human brain slices prepared from the brain tissue excised during therapeutic epileptosurgery.