Leslie A. Leinwand

Just 2% of SARS-CoV-2−positive individuals carry 90% of the virus circulating in communities

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 169 citations

We analyze data from the fall 2020 pandemic response efforts at the University of Colorado Boulder, where more than 72,500 saliva samples were tested for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) using qRT-PCR. All samples were collected from individuals who reported no symptoms associated with COVID-19 on the day of collection. From these, 1,405 positive cases were identified. The distribution of viral loads within these asymptomatic individuals was indistinguishable from wha…

Nuclear mechanosensing drives chromatin remodelling in persistently activated fibroblasts

Nature Biomedical Engineering · 2021 · 161 citations

Targeting the sarcomere in inherited cardiomyopathies

Nature Reviews Cardiology · 2022 · 121 citations

Matters of the heart: Cellular sex differences

Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology · 2021 · 76 citations

Extracellular matrix stiffness controls cardiac valve myofibroblast activation through epigenetic remodeling

Bioengineering & Translational Medicine · 2022 · 41 citations

Aortic valve stenosis (AVS) is a progressive fibrotic disease that is caused by thickening and stiffening of valve leaflets. At the cellular level, quiescent valve interstitial cells (qVICs) activate to myofibroblasts (aVICs) that persist within the valve tissue. Given the persistence of myofibroblasts in AVS, epigenetic mechanisms have been implicated. Here, we studied changes that occur in VICs during myofibroblast activation by using a hydrogel matrix to recapitulate different stiffnesses in…