Heart Cells Could Serve as New Drug Screen for COVID-19 Treatment

A study by scientists at Gladstone Institutes (San Francisco, CA, USA) explains how SARS-CoV-2 inflicts damage on heart cells, and shows the virus’s unexpected effects on the structure of heart cells in the lab, as well as in heart tissue from COVID-19 patients.

Their findings could be used as a novel way to test and screen drugs that could help mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in the heart, as well as other tissues susceptive to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The team exposed the cells to varying doses of SARS-CoV-2 and found that the virus only productively infected the cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells, meaning that it could enter those cells and make new copies of itself. The team observed that when they exposed cardiomyocytes to SARS-CoV-2, the sarcomeres in some of the cells appeared to be diced into small, regularly sized fragments. Typically, sarcomeres - units of the muscle fibers in heart cells - are organized into long filaments aligned in the same direction. These sarcomeres control the coordinated contraction of heart cells to produce the normal heartbeat. The scientists also noted that the nuclear DNA seemed to be missing from many of the heart cells. Without DNA, cells can no longer perform any normal functions.


To understand whether these changes to cells in culture were relevant to COVID-19 in humans, the researchers sought out heart tissue from COVID-19 patients. What they saw corroborated the structural changes they saw in the lab. Remarkably, even in patients who had not been diagnosed with COVID-19 related heart disease, there was evidence of structural abnormalities in the heart muscle cells. In addition to providing more insight into the impact of COVID-19 on the heart, the team’s model could be used as a novel way to test and screen drugs that could help mitigate the effects of COVID-19 in the heart, as well as other tissues susceptive to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

“Heart muscle cells are highly infectible, and we have very visually distinct signs of infection,” said Gladstone Senior Investigator Bruce R. Conklin, MD, who is also a professor of medicine, cellular and molecular pharmacology, and ophthalmology at UCSF. “Since we can easily see the effects of infection, we can use these cells as a first screen to find drugs that could shut down the virus or prevent it from taking over the cells.”


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Gladstone Institutes