Description

Cardiomyocytes Active Players in Cardiac Disease This book summarizes our
current understanding about the biology and patho-biology of cardiomyocytes and
depicts common techniques for the study of these cells. The
book is divided into two parts; the first part provides insight into role and
function of cardiomyocytes under normal conditions and describes embryogenesis
and differentiation, in the second part the role of cardiomyocytes in aging and
disease is discussed and cellular responses under stress conditions illustrated.
Cardiomyocytes represent
the main mass of the heart, and cellular malfunction directly modifies heart
function leading to subsequent heart failure. As such, cardiomyocytes are
causative involved in the main reasons of heart failure, such as post-infarct
remodeling, hypertensive heart disease, idiopathic heart failure, and
interactions with other co-morbidities such as diabetes. On the other hand,
cardiomyocytes are necessarily target of therapy. Therefore, a precise
understanding of cardiomyocytes biology is a pre-requisite for proper disease
treatment and evidence based medicine.

The book is written for
cell biologists, pharmacologists and biomedical researchers specialized in
cardiac and vascular biology.