Cleveland Clinic in $17M NIH grant for heart attack research.

Cleveland Clinic in $17M NIH grant for heart attack research

By HOLLAND JOHNSON

CDU Associate Managing Editor

The Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland) has been awarded a five-year, $17.22 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; Bethesda, Maryland) to advance its research into the science of heart attacks.

The federal funding will support Cleveland Clinic studies in four key areas: the genetics of heart attacks, the genetics of atherosclerosis, the role of proteins in arterial disease, and the role of inflammation markers in the formation of coronary plaques.

Eric Topol, MD, chairman of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and chief academic officer of the Cleveland Clinic, will serve as program director for the new NIH grant. Individual projects will be led by Qing Wang, PhD; Jonathan Smith, PhD; Edward Plow, PhD; and Stanley Hazen, MD.

This grant will give us a phenomenal and unprecedented opportunity to build on our early successes of identifying key genes and proteins implicated in causing heart attacks still the leading cause of …