A new NIH grant studies ventricular remodeling

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded UAB an $18 million Specialized Center of Clinically Oriented Research (SCCOR) grant. One of 5 in the nation, the 5-year grant funds multidisciplinary research to unravel mechanisms of left ventricular remodeling in three forms of heart disease unresponsive to standard medical treatment: volume overload of mitral regurgitation, primary aldosteronism, and diabetic cardiomyopathy.

NIH requires that SCCOR research projects focus on both clinical and basic science issues and bring together scientists from numerous fields and provide an avenue for translational research.

"UAB was built on the concept of collaboration and pooling all resources in an academic environment to study mechanisms of disease," says Louis Dell'Italia, MD, director of the SCCOR program and Center for Heart Failure Research. Ahsan Husain, PhD, serves as codirector.

The Center for Heart Failure Research was established in 2003 in an effort to understand and treat heart failure by integrating basic and clinical scientists, which helped UAB to qualify for the SCCOR grant.

"Researchers at the Center for Heart Failure Research were the first to identify an alternative pathway for the formation of angiotensin II and to identify that these pathways are compartmentalized in the heart. We were also the first to reveal a link between resistant hypertension and an increase in the neurohormone aldosterone, which provided a new method to treat patients with difficult-to-control hypertension," Dr. Dell'Italia says.

These studies will enable researchers to identify common and unique pathogenic mechanisms for chronic heart failure and will employ novel therapeutic strategies in patients based on insights gained from both clinical investigation and the study of clinically relevant basic research.

The SCCOR program consists of three projects to examine heart failure — one among patients with mitral regurgitation, directed by Dr. Dell'Italia; an aldosterone-induced myocardial fibrosis project, directed by David Calhoun, MD; and the impact of diabetes on left ventricular remodeling, directed by John Chatham, MD. A system of CORE collaborators is used by researchers in each subproject. Core areas foster interactions between investigators, accelerate the pace of research and the translation of basic research to clinical applications, and ensure a productive research effort. Projects are supported by an administrative core; a bioanalytical core, directed by Bruce Freeman, PhD; and an imaging core, directed by Dr. Dell'Italia.

"Our approach to the three separate areas of heart disease research will consider the underlying etiologies, which have distinct mechanistic and functional consequences," Dr. Dell'Italia says. "To develop new, targeted therapies, we must understand and account for these unique causes and differences. That is our goal with all three SCCOR projects and why NIH SCCOR programs require us to focus on the clinical and basic science issues."