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What are the specific contributors of obesity that lead to chronic positive energy balance and surplus energy storage?

What is the role of cellular senescence in age-related lung disease? Do environmental factors, including smoking, contribute to the pathogenesis of lung disease through their ability to induce premature senescence? Does the accumulation of senescent cells in distal organs contribute to age-related lung disease through systemic inflammation?

Create a "Center of Excellence" designation in Cardiovascular Research akin to NCI's Comprehensive Cancer Center designation. Specific qualifications for such a designation will need to be defined. However this will encourage institutions to invest heavily in CV research to support such designation. In this way, local institutions will partner with NHLBI to support discovery in heart and vascular research.

Atherosclerotic CVD is an epidemic disease that is determined primarily by the social and physical environments acting in part through risk factor distributions. To date most preventive efforts have been in the clinical setting, using medications for risk factors. As useful as this is, a much better solution is to deal with the behavioral contributors to risk and their social determinants, including strong destructive ...more »

Would better management of modifiable risk factors, including obesity, sleep apnea, hypertension, hyperglycemia, and metabolic syndrome, reduce atrial fibrillation recurrence? Furthermore, what are the best methods to reduce the onset, hospitalization, and death due to atrial fibrillation, especially that associated with aging

Gasotransmitters, such as nitric oxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen, have emerged as potent mediators of cardiovascular and lung cellular and molecular pathophysiology. While the physiological importance of these agents is becoming clearer, studies of gasotransmitters continue to suffer from several limitations such as formation, detection, metabolism, and molecular and cellular mechanistic insights. ...more »

Financial and intellectual conflict(s) of interest are common in academic medical sciences. Those conflicts could potentially bias decisions of study section members and change grant application outcomes. During the grant review process, financial and/or intellectual conflict(s) of interest disclosures of the study section members are not readily available to the grant applicants or the public. Should the NHBI increase ...more »

How to "cure" a chronic, incurable disease - A potential giant step in saving the lives of many thousands of Americans, and potentially millions worldwide, who are afflicted with COPD, the third leading cause of death in the U.S. The financial effect of COPD in the United States alone is well over $50 billion per year. It is estimated that some 30 million Americans have COPD, which of course means that at least that ...more »

There are many novel imaging modalities, including radiographic, scintigraphic, sonographic, MR-based, and molecular for the heart and vessels. Patients have unique medical "signatures"- genetic risk factor profiles, epigenetic markings, "omics" profiles, and personal clinical and family history as well as symptom constellation and physical exam findings. Can these all be integrated into a single personalized profile ...more »

There is growing evidence that risk factors beginning in childhood and young adult life, e.g. from such studies as CARDIA, Bogalusa, etc., are primary determinants of risk of CHD in adults.

As the current chair of the Research and Training Division, I would like to convey that the AAAAI membership would like the NHLBI to consider the following in the development of its strategic plan: Given the development of specific biologic therapy for asthma, what are the biomarkers and predictors of response that will allow clinicians to choose the best therapeutic combination of medications (biologic and otherwise) ...more »

Practiced-Based Research Networks (PBRNs) are critical for the conduct of pragmatic real world studies. Most PBRNs struggle to support their infrastructure. Funding is needed to support core administration and IT, i.e. electronic interfaces and data extraction, transfer and loading from multiple EHRs and PBRN registries. Continuous if not core funding is needed whether though Center (P) awards, through through NHLBI ...more »

Our understanding of the factors driving IPF fibrotic progression remain incompletely understood. To develop effective therapies that arrest and reverse the fibrotic process, we must first identify the critical factors driving the spread of fibrosis. Fibroblastic foci, the sentinel morphologic lesion of IPF, are found at the advancing edge of fibrosis. Fibroblastic foci can be conceptualized as a fibrotic niche. The ...more »

There is little evidence about the best ways in which to effectively communicate atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk to patients so that they clearly understand the potential benefits and harms of treatments in order to make informed decisions about their care. A shift toward shared decision-making and tailored treatment makes it imperative that effective risk communication strategies be developed and ...more »

Excellent work has been done by Childrens Oncology Group and Childhood Cancer survivor group and the late effects of cancer treatment ,especially in children but also young adults is an ongoing field of study. However protocols for follow up studies ,which should be done and how often and by whom are very complicated and hard to follow. My idea is to develop a simple, relatively inexpensive and user friendly,protocol ...more »