About
Cardiovascular Program
Funding
- NHLBI
- NIAID
The Cardiovascular and Metabolic Program aims at advancing the knowledge of prevalent cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and accelerating the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies. The program brings together scientists from multiple communities within MGH and Harvard. Collectively, the projects described below undertake a variety of systems-level analyses, including systematic mapping of genetic/functional interactions, functional genomics, and in vivo molecular imaging.
Atherosclerosis/Myocardial infarction
- Exploring the role of inflammatory networks in ischemic heart disease and stroke
- Major focus on monocyte/macrophage subsets, their function and ontogeny
- Chemical biology and genomic studies to assign function to susceptibility alleles for atherosclerosis or myocardial infarction
- Nanomaterial-based molecular imaging probes to define cellular and enzymatic components of plaque, and monitor disease progression and therapeutic response in pre-clinical studies and clinical trials
Metabolism and energetics
- Systematic mapping of metabolic pathways in health and disease using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics and proteomics
- Translational research in metabolic syndrome
- Functional genomics of mitochondrial function in diabetes and other human diseases
Stem cells and regeneration
- Role of hematopoietic stem cells in ischemic heart disease and stroke
- Small molecule approaches to direct differentiation of stem cells into the cardiac lineage
- Chemical screens in stem cells or model organisms to dissect developmental pathways and manipulate them for therapeutic benefit
- Nanoparticle-based imaging of transplanted stem cells in vivo
Novel biomarkers for diagnosis, clinical phenotyping and disease status
- Metabolites
- Cell-based phenotypes
- Nanoparticle-based molecular imaging
- Benchtop parallel measurement of multiplexed analytes
Recent Publications (more...)
Intra-Cardiac Release of Extracellular Vesicles Shapes Inflammation Following Myocardial Infarction.
Circ Res. 2018;:ePub - PMID: 29592957 - DOI: 10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.117.311326
Clonal Hematopoiesis Wages War on the Myocardium.
J Am Coll Cardiol. 2018;71(8):887-889 - PMID: 29471940 - DOI: 10.1016/j.jacc.2017.12.038
Cardiac macrophages promote diastolic dysfunction.
J Exp Med. 2018;215(2):423-440 - PMID: 29339450 - PMCID: PMC5789416 - DOI: 10.1084/jem.20171274 - Cover
Correlation of 360-degree Surface Mapping In Vivo Bioluminescence with Multi-Spectral Optoacoustic Tomography in Human Xenograft Tumor Models.
Recent News (more...)
2017-10-04: Aaron Aguirre, MD, PhD has received a 2017 Physician/Scientist Development Award for “Morphology and Dynamic Functions of Pericytes in the Heart.” The project will use state-of-the-art microscopy techniques to better understand the role of pericytes—unique cells that line the outer walls of the smallest blood vessels in the heart.
2017-07-21: "..changing from racing a Ferrari to riding a bicycle (with a flat tire)" - former CBS fellow Florian Leuschner is documenting his transition from a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States to junior faculty in Europe in this Circulation Research paper. (pdf)
2017-06-27: The Nahrendorf and Swirski labs at the 2017 Atherosclerosis Gordon Conference, which elected Fil Swirski as 2021 conference chair.
2017-05-17: Michael Dworkin (Higgins Lab) won a best poster award for his poster “Improved estimation of average glucose from HbA1c by adjusting HbA1c for RBC age” at the 2017 Harvard Medical School Pathology Annual Retreat.