Cardiac gene expression profiling of heart failure treatment with the anti-ischemic drug ranolazine

Heart failure is a leading cause of cardiovascular mortality with limited options for treatment. We analyzed whether the anti-ischemic drug ranolazine could retard the progression of heart failure in an experimental model of heart failure induced by 6 months of chronic pressure overload. The study showed that 2 months of ranolazine treatment improved cardiac function of aortic constricted C57BL/6J (B6) mice with symptoms of heart failure as assessed by echocardiography. The microarray gene expression study of heart tissue from failing hearts relative to ranolazine-treated and healthy control hearts identified heart failure-specific genes that were normalized during treatment with the anti-ischemic drug ranolazine. Microarray gene expression profiling was performed with heart tissue isolated from three study groups: (i) untreated 10 month-old C57BL/6J (B6) mice with heart failure induced by 6 months of abdominal aortic constriction (AAC), (ii) 10 month-old B6 mice with 6 months of AAC and two months of treatment with the anti-ischemic drug ranolazine (200 mg/kg), and (iii) age-matched, untreated, sham-operated B6 control mice.