In the United States, almost one million individuals are hospitalized every year for cardiac arrhythmias, making arrhythmias one of the top causes of healthcare expenditures with a direct cost of almost $50 billion annually. Almost 300,000 individuals die of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome every year.
Medicinal chemists at the Human BioMolecular Research Institute (HBRI), in San Diego, CA, and stem cell biologists at Stanford University, in Stanford, CA, and cardiovascular pharmacologists at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA and Columbia University, in New York City, NY, respectively, reported on reengineered mexiletine compounds that showed improved potency and decreased toxicity in addressing ventricular cardiac arrhythmia.
