VCU Participating in NIH National Cardiovascular Research Network

By Sathya Achia Abraham

Virginia Commonwealth University is one of four institutions selected to participate in a research network, supported by a nearly $9.6 million grant over five years from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, to examine cardioprotective therapies at the preclinical level.

The consortium, led by Roberto Bolli, M.D., from the University of Louisville, involves laboratories at VCU, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Emory University in Atlanta. 

The prognosis of patients after a heart attack is determined by the extent of myocardial tissue loss, or infarct size and limiting the size of the infarct is critical to ameliorate subsequent morbidity and mortality in patients. Unfortunately, after 40 years of extensive research in the field there is no clinically available cardioprotective therapy, with the exception of timely restoration of blood flow after heart attack.   

Now, through this network – also known as the CAESAR Project, or consortium for preclinical assessment of cardioprotective therapies – investigators will conduct preclinical evaluation of cardioprotective therapies, with the ultimate goal of translating the basic laboratory research into clinically applicable therapies for heart attack patients.

“VCU was chosen to participate because of our leadership in the area of myocardial protection over the last two decades,” said Rakesh C. Kukreja, Ph.D., principal investigator for the project at VCU, and the Eric Lipman professor in cardiology in the VCU School of Medicine and the scientific director of the VCU Pauley Heart Center.

“We believe that collaborations within this network will facilitate translation of basic research to the clinical setting by identifying therapies that are reproducibly effective at the preclinical level, and thus have the highest probability of success in limiting infarct size in patients. This may have huge impact in improving the survival of patients after heart attack across the country,” he said.

Kukreja, who leads a nationally recognized program in molecular cardiology at the VCU Pauley Heart Center, has received multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association to fund his research in the area of cardioprotection for more than 20 years.

The work at VCU will involve preclinical evaluation of promising cardioprotective therapies including preconditioning, sildenafil (Viagra), nitrite and a host of new agents in an animal model of myocardial infarction.

Kukreja’s laboratory is one of the first to explore the area of preconditioning. This preconditioning effect was modeled in his lab by “pretreating” mice with doses of Viagra, generically known as sildenafil, which also increases therapeutic levels of nitric oxide in the heart.

A preconditioned or pretreated heart has an improved ability to produce nitric oxide and directly improves a patient’s outcome following a heart attack. Generally, damage following a heart attack is related to an inability to recover from lack of oxygen.