Editorial - June 2021

Dear members,

Even though the pandemic is still affecting our life and research, we are all adapting to a new normal.

Our recent Working Group meeting was held virtually, together with EHRA, last April, and it has been a great success. We had 72 registered WGCCE members in the EHRA program, and 36 submitted abstracts. All our sessions were well attended (393 people, demonstrating interest in our sessions by other EHRA delegates), and we had lots of interesting discussions. Our live Zoom meeting, reserved to our members only, was also attended by almost 100 people, enabling live discussions with the poster presenters and among us. This session started with the highlight of Prof. E. Carmeliet’s life and career by Karin Sipido, which was very much appreciated and reached our hearts. We thank Karin deeply for making this effort and, for those who missed it, her words will be posted on our webpage.

We congratulate the awardees of the 45th meeting:

- CCW lecture: Antonio Zaza, Milano, Italy

- Best e-posters: Martina Arici (Italy) for the abstract entitled «SERCA2a stimulation by istaroxime improves intracellular Ca2+ handling and diastolic dysfunction in a model of diabetic cardiomyopathy» ; Julien Louradour (France), for the abstract entitled «Autonomous initiation of pacemaking by L-type Cav1.3 calcium channels in mouse sino-atrial myocytes»

- Best Live abstracts: Raphaela Lewetag (Germany), for the abstract entitled «Electro-mechanical and mechano-electrical interactions in healthy and drug-induced LQTS rabbit hearts» ; Francesca Margara (United Kingdom), for the abstract entitled «Human-based computational and experimental investigation of disease mechanisms in mutation-specific hypertrophic cardiomyopathy»

- Best abstracts selected for oral communications: Ahmed Wagdi (Germany), for the abstract entitled «OPN5 a new optogenetic receptor to study Gq signalling in the heart with light»; Laura Sommerfeld (United Kingdom), for the abstract entitled «Desmosomal vulnerability renders left atria more susceptible to detrimental effects of androgenic anabolic steroids».

We also thank all the people that contributed to make our 45th meeting special.

We are already working to organise our 46th Working Group meeting, which hopefully will be held in person, in Toledo (Spain). It will feel good to be able to discuss our research face to face again, instead of across computer screens.

We are very glad that our position paper on “Relevance, Opportunities and Limitations of Experimental Models for Cardiac Electrophysiology Research” has recently been accepted, and will BE published soon in Europace, which is our official journal. Please remember to check our publication page, where you can also find recommended reading selected from the most recent publications in our field.

Looking forward to meeting you again soon – take care!

On behalf of the Working Group nucleus,

Ana M Gómez, Chairperson 2020-2022

Elisa Passini, Communication Coordinator 2020-2022