Combining hiPSC-CMs and in-silico modeling reveals that mavacamten is effective for thick filament HCM mutations but less so for thin filament mutations, highlighting the need for targeted pharmacogenetics.
Abstract Cardiomyopathies have unresolved genotype-phenotype relationships and lack disease-specific treatments. Here we identify genotype-specific pathomechanisms and therapeutic targets combining experimental hiPSC-CM modelling and human-based cardiac electromechanical in-silico modelling and simulation bridging from specific mutations to clinical biomarkers. We select hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as a challenge for this approach and study genetic variations that mutate proteins of the thick ( MYH7 R403Q/+ ) and thin filaments ( TNNT2 R92Q/+ , TNNI3 R21C/+ ) of the cardiac sarcomere. We show that destabilisation of myosin super relaxation drives disease in MYH7 R403Q/+ with secondary effects on thin filament activation, which are corrected by Mavacamten. Thin filament variants TNNT2 R92Q/+ and TNNI3 R21C/+ share calcium regulation-related pathomechanisms, for which Mavacamten provides incomplete salvage. We define the ideal characteristics of a novel thin filament-targeting compound and show its efficacy in-silico. We demonstrate that hybrid human-based hiPSC-CM and in-silico studies accelerate pathomechanism discovery and classification testing, improving clinical interpretation of genetic variants, and directing rational therapeutic targeting and design.
Margara et al. (Sat,) studied this question.