Science
5 million euros awarded to international research teams to tackle heart and circulatory diseases
Leading researchers in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK will join forces to drive breakthroughs in the detection, diagnosis and treatment of heart and circulatory diseases, thanks to a pioneering partnership between us, the Dutch Heart Foundation (DHF) and German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK).
Together, we have awarded over €5.2 million (approximately £4.7 million) over the next four years to four international teams. This is the fifth round of awards resulting from this partnership, and the second year specifically targeted at supporting mid-career researchers in the three countries. The funding will enable researchers to exchange their knowledge, expertise, and resources to tackle some of the most pressing questions in cardiovascular science. The awards will also help the investigators become future leaders in their fields of research.
‘Progress thrives on collaboration’
Professor Metin Avkiran, our Associate Medical Director, said:
“We’re delighted to be funding these four ambitious projects in collaboration with our European partners, building on the success of the awards we have funded together over the past five years. By joining forces to support the best and the brightest across our countries to work together on pressing problems, we can ensure the money donated by our generous supporters goes further to power more lifesaving research.
“Scientific progress thrives on international collaboration. Through this funding we can help to cement collaborations between future research leaders that will continue to reap rewards long after these projects have finished.”
The four new projects funded through the International Cardiovascular Research Partnership Awards are:
BI-PATH: Using placentas to understand heart and circulatory disease risk
Principal investigators: Professor Abigail Fraser, University of Bristol; Dr Casper Mihl, Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM), Maastricht University Medical Center
Women who develop high blood pressure or pre-eclampsia during pregnancy are at higher risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases in future. Researchers have found that many women who experience these complications also have signs of maternal vascular malperfusion (MVM) in their placentas, caused when arteries in the uterus don’t undergo the necessary changes to ensure that the placenta and the baby receive adequate blood supply.
In this study, researchers will use data from studies in the UK and the Netherlands that have followed women since they were pregnant, over many years. They will test their placentas to identify those that show signs of MVM and investigate whether this is associated with the development of heart and circulatory diseases in the following years. The team hopes this will prove a simple way to spot women who may be at risk early, so that they can be offered preventative treatments and monitoring.
HeartDisc: Understanding the role of heart muscle fibres in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy
Principal investigators: Dr Katja Gehmlich, University of Birmingham; Dr Claudia Crocini, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Dr Diederik Kuster, Amsterdam UMC
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is an inherited disease that causes the muscle wall of the heart to become thickened and stiff, making it harder for the heart to pump blood. The researchers have found changes in a structure called the ‘Z-disc’, which forms part of the heart muscle fibre, in HCM patients. They believe that Z-discs have a crucial role in coordinating contraction of the heart muscle.
The team will use several approaches, including slices of heart muscle from HCM patients, heart muscle grown from stem cells, and mouse models of HCM to explore how Z-discs sense and respond to abnormal heart muscle contraction, and how this leads to other changes seen in diseased heart muscle cells. They will use what they learn to investigate drugs that could reverse changes to the Z-discs in HCM and act as a possible treatment.
Treat-ATHERO: Unlocking the potential of immune cells to combat atherosclerosis
Principal investigators: Dr Tian Zhao, University of Cambridge, Royal Papworth Hospital; Dr Amanda Foks, Universiteit Leiden
Scientists know that the immune system over-reacts to atherosclerosis, causing inflammation within arteries that makes the plaques grow. But there are no treatments that can calm this inflammation.
The researchers want to understand more about the effects of an anti-inflammatory drug called interleukin-2, which has already shown promise in early trials involving heart attack patients. In this study, the team will study fatty plaques that have been removed during surgery. Some patients will have been given a low dose of interleukin-2 before surgery while others will have received a placebo (dummy) drug. The researchers will then analyse the plaques to see how treatment affects immune cells within the plaques.
Using mice with atherosclerosis, they will also unravel the molecular pathways that boost and sustain anti-inflammatory activity within fatty plaques to improve our understanding of how the treatment works. Finally, they will test a cutting-edge version of this drug that has been engineered to target immune cells within fatty plaques. By testing this in mice with atherosclerosis and plaques from human patients, they hope to determine whether it can help to dampen inflammation and slow, or even stop, atherosclerosis progressing.
Shift-DCM: Decoding dilated cardiomyopathy
Principal investigators: Dr Joseph Burgoyne, King’s College London; Dr Lukas Cyganek, UMC Goettingen; Dr Monika Gladka, Amsterdam UMC
In dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), the muscular walls of the heart stretch, becoming thin and weak. There are treatments available to manage the symptoms of DCM, but none that can stop it getting worse.
Using human heart muscle cells grown from stem cells, and mice with DCM, this project will investigate how faulty genes that cause DCM weaken the function of heart muscle cells. The researchers want to understand how this affects their ability to cope with the damage that can happen when certain molecules naturally produced by the body are thrown off balance..
The team will then apply what they discover to study different ways to restore this balance in heart muscle. This includes molecular switches that can turn gene expression on and off, and revolutionary gene editing technologies that re-write individual letters in DNA to provide protection against DCM. The team hopes these approaches will lead to new treatments to slow the progression of DCM, or even stop it developing in the first place.