Even as Kricket Seidman and others are making these breakthroughs at the bedside, the researchers do not stop there. Back at bench, Jon Seidman is poring over the clinical data, including which mutations predict the worst or best-case scenarios. That information helps him choose the best mutations to focus on in mice; the most severe and the most common, top the list.

Also, he is studying the latency period of the disease, the time before the heart muscle thickens. By unraveling the molecular and biochemical reasons for that delay, he is hoping to find ways to extend it. That extension is an ideal target for new drugs to treat cardiomyopathy. And most recently, researchers are making great strides in finding those drugs; in particular, investigators are treating mice with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with drugs that affect calcium movement in and out of cells. Those studies are showing great promise.