The University of Oslo is closed. The PhD defence and trial lecture will therefore be fully digital and streamed directly using Zoom. The host of the session will moderate the technicalities while the chair of the defence will moderate the disputation.
Ex auditorio questions: the chair of the defence will invite the audience to ask ex auditorio questions either written or oral. This can be requested by clicking 'Participants -> Raise hand'.
Trial lecture
"In silico assessment of drug cardiac safety and efficacy: state of the art and interaction with the in vitro world."
Main research findings
Computational models to understand hearts
Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia in humans, affecting between 1 and 2% of the population worldwide, and posing a significant health burden to society. Although not fatal in itself, it can lead to potentially deadly conditions, such as stroke, and congestive heart failure. It is therefore important to better understand this condition.
Atrial Fibrillation develops as a result of physiological changes at cellular and tissue levels. Studying cellular alterations allows us to explore disease mechanisms, and to discover novel targets for drug-based treatments.
Computational modelling of cardiac electrophysiology is a well-established methodology for the systematic study of cardiac diseases. In this thesis, I used computational models of atrial cells to shed light on the role of calcium-driven mechanisms on Atrial Fibrillation. The results showed that disruptions in intracellular calcium regulation have a major impact on the behavior of atrial cells, leading to the development of arrhythmic or abnormal electrical activity. The thesis also showed that incorporating biological variability into cellular characteristics, instead of considering only a single representative atrial cell, results in a variety of different behaviours under diseased conditions. This highlights the importance of considering variability in computational modelling studies to produce more robust results and predictions.
Contact information to Department: Mozhdeh Sheibani Harat