Four million euros of European funding to tackle heart and circulatory diseases

Our new partnership with the Dutch Heart Foundation and the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) will fund leading researchers from the UK, Netherlands and Germany to collaborate on projects to improve the diagnosis and treatment of heart and circulatory diseases. 

Through the initiative, together we have awarded more than €4million (around £3.9million), over four years, for international teams to investigate life-changing conditions including, heart failure, abnormal heart rhythms and the causes of unexplained cardiac arrests. 

We are building on our work with the DZHK, in which €4million was awarded to cross-border projects. This second round of funding involves the Dutch Heart Foundation and aims to pool research resources, encourage collaboration between world-leading experts, and fund the very best European research into heart and circulatory diseases. We expect to have a third call for projects  later in 2020.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, our Associate Medical Director, said: “By joining forces with our counterparts in other European countries, we can ensure that the generous donations we receive are super-charged to get the biggest bang for their buck.

“Medical research funders are facing significant challenges across Europe. Fundraising is harder than ever, and a lot of attention has understandably been turned to Covid-19 research. But by funding these international projects, combining the very best expertise, we can keep up the pace of progress in finding new and improved ways of treating heart and circulatory diseases.”

“The new grants will support cross-European research into heart muscle diseases and sudden cardiac arrest. We look forward to seeing more exciting, diverse research proposals submitted in the third round, expected to be later this year.”

What European projects has the BHF funded?

Projects funded in this new scheme are:

I-CARE - Quantitative-imaging in cardiac transthyretin amyloidosis

Dr Marc Dweck, University of Edinburgh; Professor Riemer Slart, University of Groningen; Dr Fabien Sipen, University of Heidelberg. 

A collaboration between the Universities of Edinburgh, Heidelberg and Groningen received a grant of around €1.1million (~£1million) to develop better ways to diagnose a relatively rare, but deadly, heart muscle condition called Transthyretin-Amyloid-Cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM). This project will build on an imaging technique primarily used in imaging bones (18F-fluoride PET or Positron Emission Tomography) by using expertise developed in Edinburgh that applies this technology to the heart, with Europe’s three largest ATTR-CM patient centres, in Edinburgh, Groningen and Heidelberg. PET imaging will provide the most detailed understanding yet of which patients respond to treatment.

GenUCA - The Genomic basis of Unexplained Cardiac Arrest

Professor Elijah Behr, St George’s University of London; Professor Martin Borggrefe, Heidelberg University; Professor Connie Bezzina, Amsterdam UMC.

An award of around €2million (~£1.8million) has been granted to a team investigating the tragedy of sudden cardiac deaths. One in twenty sudden cardiac arrests has no known cause. This means that even if a person survives their cardiac arrest, they and their families are left in the dark as to whether they have a silent killer waiting in their genes. The teams will assemble the largest ever group of survivors of sudden cardiac arrest and search their families’ DNA to look for genetic changes that could have caused the cardiac arrest. Ultimately, this collaboration of expertise in cardiology, genetics, rare diseases, cell studies and animal modelling aims to find new ways to prevent sudden cardiac death, a particular killer of the young, and save lives.

DnAFiX - DNA damage in cytoskeletal protein mutation-induced atrial fibrillation

Professor Bianca Brundel, Amsterdam UMC; Professor Niels Voigt, University Medical Center Göttingen.

The team from Germany and the Netherlands will study a rare inherited cause of a common form of abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation) with a €1.2million (~£1.1million) award.  As there is no UK partner in this project, the BHF will not be contributing funding. The teams involved in this grant have previously found that some families affected by atrial fibrillation (AF) have mutations in the genes responsible for the proteins that behave as the building blocks of heart cells. They believe that these mutations cause DNA damage to cells in the atria, and this causes the fibrillation. This project aims to uncover exactly how these genetic mutations lead to protein damage and then AF, and to test several existing drugs to develop better treatments for people with this genetic cause of the condition.

While we are committed to honouring our funding commitments made before the coronavirus crisis, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic means that our net income, and resulting investment in new research, is likely to drop by up to 50 per cent this year. We've joined the Association of Medical Research Charities and 151 of its members, including Cancer Research UK and Parkinson’s UK, to call on the UK Government to match charity funded research for the next three years. 

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