NHCS partners with Paratus Sciences to advance heart failure research

The collaboration will explore bat heart physiology to identify factors that enable their resilience to stress.

The National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) has partnered with Paratus Sciences to accelerate heart failure (HF) research following a pilot study on the adaptability of bat hearts to intense stress.

Through Paratus’s "PREVENT-HF" research platform, the organisations will investigate bat heart physiology to identify potential factors that enable their resilience to stress.

These factors will be validated and applied to human patient-specific beating heart cells with HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Their efficacy in preventing heart failure will be evaluated using mouse models of HFpEF.

Meanwhile, the pilot study involved researchers from NHCS and Duke-NUS Medical School assessing the pumping strength of bat and mouse hearts under stress by administering dobutamine, a medication that stimulates heart function.

The results indicated that bat hearts exhibited greater pumping strength than those of mice, suggesting better functional capacity supported by a robust cardiovascular system.