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On the afternoon of September 23, Prof. William T. Pu, MD, director of Department of Cardiology, Boston Children’s Hospital affiliated to Harvard Medical School, delivered a lecture entitled From Engineered Human Heart Tissue Models to Gene Therapy for Inherited Heart Disease at Hubei University. Shang Gang, Party secretary of Hubei University, had a brief meeting with him before the lecture. More than 200 audience, including leaders of School of Life Sciences and faculty and student representatives attended the lecture.

Prof. William T. Pu, MD has made great achievements in the fields of heart development, heart regeneration and cardiovascular disease. In his talk, he introduced the technology of reprogramming the patients' blood cells to become induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, capable of making virtually all cell types. From these, they made cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) carrying the CPVT mutations and used them to construct models of heart-muscle tissue. He also mentioned that the technology is not currently available for final clinical trials and still requires further research.

In the questioning session, Prof. William T. Pu, MD shared his attitude to research failures, “Keep enthusiastic and curious to what you are working on, and achieve your research goal step by step.”