MicroRNA as biomarkers and regulators of myocardial cell fate

Search of diagnostic and prognostic markers of a number of serious human diseases, including myocardial ischemic injury, is an important and urgent problem of applied molecular biology. The need of the improvement of myocardial protection techniques and approaches that can predict the course of the patient recovery after surgery makes it particularly important to find new highly specific and sensitive biomarkers of earliest stages of cardiomyocytes damage. MicroRNAs are the possible candidates for the role of such biomarkers due to tissue-specific expression, rapid changes in levels and presence in circulation in the form stable to degradation.

Research work is aimed to reveal dynamics of circulating microRNAs in animal models of myocardial ischemia and in patients plasma during coronary artery bypass grafting surgery, detection of intracellular and extracellular miRNA partners, as well as the development of methods to overcome PCR inhibition in heparinized samples and protocols for rapid assessment of ischemic myocardial injury by measuring the absolute levels of circulating microRNAs.

Studies in this area have worked closely in collaboration with the Institute of Experimental Medicine of Federal Almazov Medical Research Centre.