Joseph Powers
University of Washington, WA·Biophysics·Early-career
Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a common and deadly inherited heart disease. In DCM, the heart's main pumping chamber enlarges and contracts weakly.
- Fields
Biophysics
Physiology
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
dilated cardiomyopathy
Filamin C
cardiomyocytes
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Test whether loss of Filamin C (FLNC), a protein linking the heart cell's contractile units to its surroundings, disrupts inside-out force transmission by altering filament lattice geometry in mouse cardiomyocytes, using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and multiscale modeling.
- Apply X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and modeling to a human dilated cardiomyopathy model: heart cells derived from gene-edited induced pluripotent stem cells carrying a patient-specific FLNC-truncating variant.
- Test whether truncated FLNC disrupts outside-in mechanosignaling and promotes harmful remodeling in human stem-cell-derived heart cells, using FRET-based molecular tension sensors, mechanical loading and transcriptomics of hypertrophy genes.
More about the research
It is often caused by mutations in proteins that form the internal scaffolding of heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes). Current treatments only slow the disease. A key idea is that these mutations disrupt how heart cells sense and pass along mechanical forces. That includes the forces the cell's own contractile machinery generates and the forces it feels from its surroundings. These force-sensing pathways may drive harmful remodeling of the heart.
Why it matters
Patients with dilated cardiomyopathy currently have treatments that only delay disease progression. By revealing how defects in Filamin C disrupt force sensing and force transmission in heart cells, this work could identify mechanisms to target with new treatments. Such treatments could prevent or slow mechanically triggered harmful remodeling of the heart.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Francesca Briganti
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Test candidate miRNAs in stem-cell-derived heart muscle cells (iPSC-CMs) carrying DCM variants in PLN, RBM20 or TNNT2, to find the mechanisms by which they improve contraction.
Ryan Stowers
University of California-Santa Barbara, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Determine whether cardiomyopathy-driven remodeling of the extracellular matrix alters myocardial viscoelasticity, by mechanically testing human DCM and HCM heart tissue and pig disease-model tissue.
Ju Chen
University of California-San Diego, CA·Physiology
Test whether mini-ALPK3, a shortened version of the ALPK3 kinase delivered by the muscle-targeting MyoAAV virus on the first day of life, prevents cardiomyopathy and early death in Alpk3 knockout mice.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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