Potential Role of Gene Therapy Targeting Hippo Signaling with Adeno-Associated Virus Based Vectors in Heart Failure Post-Myocardial Infarction

Heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart cannot pump enough blood for the body's needs. This disease is caused by loss of cardiomyocytes and fibrosis, and is a leading cause of death worldwide. Current therapeutic treatments cannot generally directly replace lost cardiomyocytes in the myocardium, so the prognosis for patients with post-myocardial infarction heart failure remains poor. Based on the results of recent research, deactivating the Salvador (Sav) function in the Hippo pathway can regenerate cardiomyocyte cells. Gene therapy using Sav knockdown with adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector-based short hairpin RNA (shRNA), and restricted to cardiomyocytes by using the cTnT promoter, can specifically target cardiomyocyte cells in the infarction area so that it can become a new therapy for heart failure after myocardial infarction. Keywords: AAV, gene therapy, hippo pathway, post-myocardial infarction heart failure