Lush Prize winner publishes cutting edge research into cardiac development in babies

One of the Lush Prize’s award-winning Young Researchers of 2016 has recently published innovative research into foetal heart development, which could help prevent miscarriage.

Eleftheria Pervoloraki leads a research team at Leeds University investigating how sophisticated, 3D-based MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) can track the development of the human heart in greatly improved detail. Their work recently showed how rapidly development occurs (over just four days) and highlights a critical period of muscle and chamber development, as well as revealing a key protein which could be involved. It is hoped their success can be used in the future to monitor the heart more effectively and save lives.

Lush Prize congratulates Dr. Pervoloraki and her team, whose work has recently attracted significant media attention (see BBC article here) and details of their groundbreaking research, including images of the high resolution techniques they have used were published in The Scientist.

References

Pervoloraki, E. et al. (2017). Ventricular myocardium development and the role of connexins in the human fetal heart,” Scientific Reports.  7:12272.