UCCS Fellow Christina Molina

Cristina is a passionate cardiac cellular electrophysiologist with 18 years of experience in basic science and translational research, and a group leader at UKE since 2018. Her primary scientific interests are in understanding the basic cellular pathomechanisms underlying cardiac arrhythmias, the role of cyclic nucleotides signaling and how the remodeling on cAMP/cGMP-dependent kinases (such as PKA, PKG and CaMKII) signaling is linked to compartment-specific changes in Ca2+-handling in human myocytes. Although many studies have been performed in animal models, the role of cyclic nucleotides, PKA, CaMKII and PDEs in human remains rather unexplored. She developed a novel isolation method, which allows her to culture human myocytes, to: 1) perform in classical electrophysiological and novel imaging techniques, 2) generate with knock-in /-out models directly in human cells. This is a new highly translational model for drug screening, cardiotoxicity testing and target validation, alternative to animal testing, as reflected in her latest publication, where her team discovered a new molecular mechanism for the proarrhythmic reduction of ICa,L in persistent atrial fibrillation and establish PDE8B2 as a novel atrial-selective target for treatment of this arrhythmia.