Innovating at the intersection of cardiac and neural health.

Dr. Benjamin Prosser leads research teams that focus on cardiac mechanobiology to develop new therapies for heart disease. And recently an arm of his lab has been dedicated to genetic therapies for neurodevelopmental disorders of the brain.

Dr. Benjamin Prosser’s work focuses on how changes at a cellular levelaffect the growth and mechanics of the heart. Specifically, his lab studies microtubules in heart muscle cells that provide the working force behind each heartbeat. The heart changes size and shape, due to stress from pregnancy or hypertension for instance. Scientists were unclear on how the heart remodels itself on the cellular level.

Dr. Prosser’s work revealed that microtubules are responsible for transporting materials to areas in need of remodeling. He observed that microtubules intelligently redistribute growth inducing mRNAs and subcellular proteins to sites of growth on demand. These discoveries are instrumental in understanding how the heart adapts to stress.

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  Microtubules (black) serve as the tracks by which the ribosomes and mRNAs (yellow) are moved around the heart muscle cell. Optimal positioning of these proteins requires microtubule transport and is essential for growing the heart cell.

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  Microtubules serve as the tracks by which the protein translation machinery are moved around the heart muscle cell. We’ve found that optimal positioning of mRNAs and ribosomes requires microtubule transport and is essential for growing the heart cell on demand.

• Microtubules are dynamic. They use the ability to shrink and grow to navigate the tightly packed environment of a heart muscle cell and deliver cargo
  to a specific region of the cell.

Peering deep into the heart and brain unveils elegant complexity
and new therapeutic possibilities.

Although Dr. Benjamin Prosser’s lab focuses primarily on cardiacresearch, that changed when his infant daughter was diagnosed with STXBP1 encephalopathy, a rare gene based neuro developmental disorder that causes seizures.

He realized his research experience could help others with genetic epilepsy syndromes. He dedicated part of his lab to neuroscience research and partnered with clinicians and scientists focused on Epilepsy Neurogenetics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Prosser and his team are working with patient neurons to try and increase their expression of STXBP1. The idea is to develop genetic or pharmacological interventions that correct for deficiencies in the STXBP1 gene to facilitate more normal function.

We're trying to develop next-generation therapies to help this current generation of children.

Dr. Benjamin Prosser’s work in microtubules is revealing more and more about how the heart beats, grows and repairs itself at the cellular level.

Each heart muscle cell contains a scaffolding made of microtubules and other cytoskeletal filaments that control contraction and relaxation through mechanical signals. But where the role of microtubules was previously unknown, Dr. Prosser’s lab is finding that they serve as mechanical participants in cardiac function.

High resolution images have shown that microtubules can regulate contraction and relaxation, facilitate repairs, and deliver new proteins in response to stress or damage. Dr. Prosser’s research is instrumental in developing new therapies for heart failure.

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  Visualization of the aspect ratio of the pore space in a tensile specimen.

• Visualization of pore morphology classes for process parameter optimization. Based on the pore morphology visualized via xCT, researchers can tune the laser power and velocity to reduce pores.

• Intermediate filaments (purple) and microtubules (orange) form critical components of the heart muscle cytoskeleton. Together, they maintain cell structure, transport various organelles and cargo, and alter the cells’ mechanical properties.

• The super-resolution microscope Elyra 7 takes you far beyond the diffraction limit of conventional microscopy: With Lattice SIM² you can now double the conventional SIM resolution and discriminate the finest sub-organelle structures, even those no more than 60 nm apart.

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