Impact of cardiac fibroblast-derived exosomes on electrical and contractile activity of the heart

Biography

Dr Patrizia Camelliti is Head of Cardiovascular Science at the University of Surrey. Her group investigates how cardiac cells interact within the native structure of the heart to control electrical activity, contractility, and disease. Her work focuses on cardiac electrophysiology, fibroblast–cardiomyocyte interactions, and human cardiac tissue models.

She pioneered the development and application of living myocardial slices from human hearts, providing physiologically relevant platforms to study arrhythmia mechanisms, cardiac remodelling, and drug responses in intact cardiac tissue. Her research integrates advanced imaging, optical mapping, tissue engineering, and electrophysiology to understand how structural changes in the heart contribute to arrhythmias, fibrosis, and heart failure.

Her work has been published in leading journals including Science, PNAS, and Advanced Science, and has contributed to the global adoption of heart slice models for translational cardiovascular research. Her laboratory develops innovative human cardiac models and imaging technologies to advance mechanistic discovery and improve therapeutic strategies for heart disease.

Patrizia holds an MSci from the University of Milan and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. Prior to joining Surrey, Patrizia held two prestigious personal fellowships, a Junior Research Fellowship at Christ Church College, University of Oxford, where she pursued research at the interface between cardiac physiology and bioengineering, and a Career Development Fellowship from Imperial College, where she established living myocardial slice from human hearts.

Patrizia is a Committee member of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research, member of the NC3Rs Tools and Technologies Grant Panel, review editor for Frontiers in Cardiac Electrophysiology, and member of the UK Physiological Society, the European Society of Cardiology, the International Society for Heart Research and the Biophysical Society. Patrizia is a reviewer for MRC, BBSRC, NC3Rs, the BHF and the French National Research Agency.

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