Peter Hanna
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm disorder. In AF, electrical signals in the upper chambers of the heart (the atria) become disorganized, so the atria quiver instead of contracting together.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Neuroscience
- Topics
atrial fibrillation
cardiac arrhythmia
cardiac autonomic nervous system
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Identify which ganglionated plexus neurons supply the pulmonary veins and back wall of the left atrium by injecting a retrograde neural tracer into donated human hearts and imaging them with confocal microscopy.
- Build a catalog of neuron subtypes across the heart's intrinsic nervous system using single-nucleus RNA sequencing, which reads the active genes in individual cells, on neurons from human ganglionated plexuses.
- Test how ablating specific ganglionated plexuses changes how easily AF can be triggered and what off-target effects follow, using reanimated human hearts given drug and electrical stimulation.
- Compare long-term nerve remodeling after standard catheter ablation versus ganglionated plexus ablation in a newly developed chronic pig model of atrial fibrillation.
More about the research
AF raises the risk of stroke and death. Today's drugs and ablation procedures often fail, and many patients see the arrhythmia return. The heart has its own nervous system that helps control its rhythm, so nerves are a promising place to intervene. But recent trials that destroyed ganglionated plexuses (GPs), clusters of heart nerve cells buried in fat on the heart's surface, did not reduce AF. Some patients also needed pacemakers afterward.
Why it matters
Many people with atrial fibrillation remain at risk of stroke because current drug and ablation treatments often fail, and AF carries large healthcare costs. A map of which heart nerve clusters supply the regions where AF arises could help refine catheter ablation, so doctors target only the relevant nerves and avoid harms such as needing a pacemaker. It could also reveal new treatment targets.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jeffrey Goldberger
University of Miami, FL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare 4D flow MRI measures of left atrial appendage blood stasis and other atrial cardiopathy markers across patients with embolic stroke of undetermined source, AF-related stroke, AF alone, and neither.
Thomas Everett
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, IN·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether skin sympathetic nerve activity (SKNA), nerve signals recorded noninvasively from the skin, predicts brain recovery in cardiac arrest patients receiving targeted temperature management, a protective cooling therapy.
Anna Pfenniger
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Map when and where endothelial dysfunction appears during atrial fibrillation, especially the shift from paroxysmal to persistent AF, in two large animal models of AF.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
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