Revolutionary Robotic System Offers New Hope for Treating Heart Disease


Revolutionary Robotic System Offers New Hope for Treating Heart Disease

An innovative robotic system at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) is transforming the approach to treating heart disease, specifically arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a major cause of sudden cardiac death among young adults. For patients living with this inherited condition, the only curative option has historically been a heart transplant. However, a research team led by Dr. Jason Maynes at SickKids, along with Drs. Yu Sun and Xinyu Liu from the University of Toronto's Robotics Institute, has developed groundbreaking robotic technology that enables scientists to test multiple potential therapeutics simultaneously for the first time.

Dr. Maynes, Chief of the Department of Anesthesia and Pain Medicine and a Senior Scientist in the Molecular Medicine program, emphasizes the significance of this technology: "This technology will allow us to get the right drug, to the right person, at the right time."


Story Source:
Materials provided by The Hospital for Sick Children. The original text of this story is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  • Wenkun Dou, Guanqiao Shan, Qili Zhao, Manpreet Malhi, Aojun Jiang, Zhuoran Zhang, Andrés González-Guerra, Shaojie Fu, Junhui Law, Robert M. Hamilton, Juan A. Bernal, Xinyu Liu, Yu Sun, Jason T. Maynes. Robotic manipulation of cardiomyocytes to identify gap junction modifiers for arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy. Science Robotics, 2024; 9 (95) DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adm8233