Precision modification of heart failure signaling by CRISPR-Cas9 base editing.

Heart failure remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and current therapies largely focus on symptom management and slowing disease progression rather than correcting the underlying molecular abnormalities. Recent advances in genome editing technologies have created new opportunities to treat heart failure. Among these approaches, CRISPR-Cas9 base editing has emerged as a particularly promising strategy because it enables precise nucleotide conversions without introducing double-strand DNA breaks and demonstrates relatively high efficiency in vivo. While correction of disease-causing mutations by CRISPR-Cas9 base editing represents an important application of genome editing, an alternative strategy is to directly modulate key signaling pathways that drive cardiac dysfunction. Protein kinase C alpha (PKCα) functions as a key regulator of cardiac contractility and pathological remodeling. Precision editing of phosphorylation sites that control PKCα stability or activation may therefore represent an effective strategy to suppress maladaptive kinase signaling in cardiomyocytes. This concept of "precision signaling modification" may provide a broadly applicable therapeutic approach for heart failure. Similar strategies may also be applicable to other signaling molecules, including Ca