UK gets biggest-ever grant from National Institutes of Health to probe links between obesity and cardiovascular disease
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| Dr. Lisa Cassis directs the program. |
The university’s Center of Biomedical Research Excellence “supports research of promising junior faculty focused on
identifying mechanisms linking the epidemic of obesity to a high
prevalence of cardiovascular diseases,” a UK press release said. The faculty support helps the researchers compete for new NIH grants. In the first phase of the program, 90 percent competed successfully, and they published 500 study reports.
“Research to be executed under the present grant runs the gamut from
laboratory research conducted at the cellular level, to bedside
translational research conducted in pediatric and adult patients,” the release said. “Projects focus on mechanisms for the development of obesity, the
influence of obesity on recovery of the heart following a heart attack,
obesity-induced inflammation, and how this influences the cardiovascular
system, and imaging of heart dynamics and function in obese children.”