Department of Medicine

Current Grants and Funding Support

Master
Content

Grant Title: Profiling cardiovascular events and biomarkers in the very old to improve personalized approaches for the prevention of cardiac and vascular disease [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goal of this project is to develop risk prediction tools for atherosclerotic CVD and HF tailored for very old adults; including cardiac biomarker measurements, to provide more comprehensive CVD risk assessment and to allow more precise assessment of potential benefits and risks of therapy as well as midlife lifestyle, demographic, and clinical factors that lead to healthy cardiovascular aging.

Grant Title: Clonal hematopoiesis in humans: determinants of development and progression [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goal of this proposal is to understand how acquired (somatic) mutations in hematopoietic stem cells contribute to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD)

Grant Title: Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study—Field Centers (Subcontract) [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The goal of the ARIC Field Centers is to enhance statistical power to perform analyses of predictors of clinical events, particularly in informative sub groups and study the progression of subclinical cardiovascular disease (CVD), including identification of new risk factors or interactions among factors.  

Grant Title: Diabetes and pre-diabetes in older adults (Subcontract) [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goals of this project is to conduct glucose, hemoglobin A1c, serum creatinine, NT-proBNP, hs-Troponin T, glycated albumin, fructosamine, 1,5 anhydroglucitol, urine albumin, and urine creatinine measurements on all participants who attend visits 6/7 of the ARIC project.

Grant Title: Mapping the progression to HFPEF in the elderly through longitudinal changes in cardiac function (Subcontract) [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goals of the project is to measure pathway biomarkers in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study cohort attending visit 7.

Grant Title: Elucidating the role of adipokines in mediating and predicting HF associated with obesity (Subcontract) [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goals are to evaluate the associations of adipokines among 11,656 participants in ARIC with (A) demographics, weight history and physical activity, and B) subclinical and (C) clinical HF; to relate longitudinal trajectories of adipokines from late midlife to older age in 1,000 ARIC  participants to echocardiographic measures of left ventricular dysfunction and subsequent HF events ; to assess the correlation of adipokine

Grant Title: The importance of adipokines in mediating the relationship of obesity with cardiometabolic health and diabetes: implications for subclinical and clinical heart failure (Subcontract) [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: AHA – American Heart Association
Description: The Atherosclerosis Clinical Research laboratory (ACRL) at Baylor College of Medicine will perform the Luminex Obesity panel 4-plex using the BioRad Bio-Plex to measure adiponectin, leptin, resistin and visfatin in a subcohort of ARIC visit 5.

Grant Title: Using hscTnI and NT-proBNP to personalize blood pressure treatment goals: a Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) substudy [Ballantyne]
Funding Agency: Abbott Laboratories
Description: The primary objective of this study is to determine if SPRINT participants with early cardiovascular end organ damage, as determined by higher levels of hs-cTnI, and/or neurohormonal activation, as determined by higher NT-proBNP, derive greater net benefit from intensive BP lowering (augmented reduction in CV mortality/HF risk).

Grant Title: Action for Health in Diabetes [Foreyt]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goal of this multi-center trial is to determine the relative effectiveness of two approaches to weight management in type 2 diabetes and to assess over an extended period the alterations in the progression of atherosclerosis and other health indicators.

Grant Title: The role of inflammasome in the pathogenesis of atrial fibrillation [Li]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The goals of this project are 1) to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the activation of NLRP3 inflammasome, 2) to investigate how NLRP3 inflammasome activation promotes AF, and 3) to validate NLRP3 inhibition as a novel anti-AF strategy

Grant Title: Mechanisms underlying atrial fibrillation associated with chronic kidney disease [Li]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The long term goals of the proposal is to uncover the molecular and cellular pathways underlying AF development as consequences of CKD.

Grant Title: Reprogrammed cardiac progenitor cells into cardiac conduction cells for heart repair [Li]
Funding Agency: Baylor College of Medicine–University of Houston Collaborative Grant Program
Description: The objective of this project is to investigate the potential of cardiac conduction cells as a cell-based approach for the treatment of sinoatrial node dysfunction and heart failure

Grant Title: Mechanisms of lamin A/C-mediated cardiac conduction disorders [Li]
Funding Agency: CVRI Pilot Award
Description: The long-term goals of this study are to elucidate the function of lamin A/C in modulation of cardiac conduction system and to establish the pathogenic role of Lamin A/C mutation in cardiac conduction disorders

Grant Title: Biomarker guided therapies in stage A/B heart failure [Nambi]
Funding Agency: VA – Department of Veteran Affairs
Description: The goal of this grant is to evaluate if the use of carvedilol or spironolactone in subjects with adequately controlled blood pressure but at higher risk for heart failure can improve surrogate markers associated with heart failure

Grant Title: Metabolic crosstalk through vascular endothelium-secreted factors [Pi]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: This grant will determine the metabolic consequences of BMPER depletion, establish the anti-diabetic potential of recombinant BMPER and define the mechanisms that govern BMPER regulation of insulin action.

Grant Title: Determining and targeting reasons for low statin use to improve guideline-concordant statin therapy in high-risk patients [Virani]
Funding Agency: VA – Department of Veteran Affairs
Description: The aim of this grant is to determine reasons for poor guideline driven statin use in Veterans with cardiovascular diseases and improve initiation of evidence-based statin therapy in CVD patients.

Grant Title: Effectiveness of telehealth to adequately manage ACSC such as admission for congestive heart failure (CHF) [Virani]
Funding Agency: VA – Department of Veteran Affairs
Description: The aim of this grant is to address how VHA can better prepare for future infectious disease outbreaks by comparing qualitative and quantitative outcomes between facilities with strong existing telehealth use and those forced to adopt telehealth in response to COVID-19.

Grant Title: Optimizing renin angiotensin system blocker use among veterans with kidney disease [Virani]
Funding Agency: VA – Department of Veteran Affairs
Description: The aim of this grant is to understand the reasons for low use of renin angiotensin blockers in patients with chronic kidney disease and whether a point-of-care intervention can improve renin angiotensin blocker use in such patients.  

Grant Title: Regulation of type 1 inflammation in diet-induced obesity [Wu]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The major goals of this grant are  to identify a novel mechanism that regulates AT T cell T1I in obesity and examine the role of the regulatory pathway in obesity-linked inflammation and metabolic functions and the potential of targeting this pathway to prevent and treat obesity and related inflammation and metabolic disease.

Grant Title: Novel roles of Fe (2+), 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases in cardiac function [Xie]
Funding Agency: NIH – National Institutes of Health
Description: The work proposed in this grant seeks to examine the mechanisms and signaling pathways by which PHD2/3 regulate cardiac function, at both stressed and non-stressed conditions. It will open up the possibility of novel therapeutic approaches for ischemic heart disease based on the manipulation of cardiac PHD2/3.