HCM Pills Episode 5 Professor Connie Bezzina

HCM Pills is a series of webcasts organized by the HCM Patient Foundation. The purpose of the webcast is to ask the most burning questions of patients to world-renowned HCM experts who reply to them in a clear and understandable way.

Our fifth guest, Prof. Connie Bezzina, is a Full Professor of Heart Failure and Arrhythmias at Amsterdam University Medical Centre. She conducts research on genetic factors underlying inherited cardiac disorders, focusing mainly on primary electrical disorders associated with sudden cardiac death in the young. Her work considers the broad spectrum of genetic complexities of these disorders, ranging from monogenic to polygenic, and has pioneered the concept of polygenic inheritance in the rare rhythm disorders such as Brugada syndrome. To enable such studies, she established international consortia of researchers from all over the world, bringing together hundreds of patients. In an integrative approach, her group also studies the identified genetic factors in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and gene-targeted mice in order to understand the causative mechanisms and identify preventive and therapeutic strategies. She has authored numerous important articles and is an editorial member of the European Heart Journal.

The anchor of HCM Pills is Dr. Niccolo' Maurizi, Chief Resident in Cardiology at CHUV | Lausanne university. Prior to that, he worked as a Researcher at Università degli Studi di Firenze. He co-founded D-Heart, a startup for innovative cardiologic wearable concepts in 2015. He has authored and co-authored almost 100 scientific articles with concentration on HCM-related issues (sudden cardiac arrest management, pregnancy in HCM, smart devices in clinical practice, etc.). Niccolo' will be asking all questions of HCM patients to our patients.