We need to understand sleep and circadian disorders at a more mechanistic level. This applies to both the pathogenesis of these disorders and to their impact on health. New neurobiological and molecular tools facilitate this research. The focus needs to be not only in brain but also the impact of these disorders on future of peripheral organs. The elucidation of the fundamental functions of sleep and the impact of... more »

How does inflammation and cell injury induce the immune system during transplant rejection? How do we control immune responses to enable cell- and tissue-regenerative strategies?
• How does inflammation and cell injury induce the immune system during transplant rejection?
• How do we control immune responses to enable cell and tissue regenerative strategies?
• How do we use iPS cell based and gene editing based therapies... more »

What is the measureable normal human variation at the -omic, cellular, organ, and system levels within the population and across the lifespan?
• What are the range of normal human cellular functions that create resilience at all levels—cells, organs, organ systems?
• What inter-organ, tissue, and cellular communications maintain individual health and the health of populations?
• How do we understand why individuals with... more »

There is a need to develop computational biology modeling approaches to study normal variation in heart, lung, blood, and sleep (HLBS) systems.

The research on pulmonary vascular biology including smooth muscle cell biology and endothelial cell biology and related pulmonary vascular diseases such as pulmonary hypertension and related right heart failure, and endothelial dysfunction in lung vascular inflammation and acute lung injury, as well as pulmonary embolism and lung transplantation has been rapidly expanding. The field is attracting an ever increasing... more »

The challenge is to identify limitations in using data from non-human animal species for elucidation of human electromechanical function/activity and to identify what specific information and computational approaches need to be incorporated. To aid in achieving such a goal, it might be useful to convene a series of workshops to build consensus and improve communication among investigators working at the same horizontal... more »

How do growth, development, exposure, and behavior affect heart, lung, blood, sleep disease development and outcome throughout the lifespan?

 

How do you improve organ function/capacity during childhood?

Critical Challenge

Although many think of the vasculature as a lump sum of vessels that all react in a similar fashion to a certain stimulus, e.g., alpha-adrenergic activation, this is not the situation. For example, coronary resistance vessels show little to no direct response to alpha-adrenergic activation while resistance vessels in most organs show marked constriction. Another example is the response of different vessels to angioplasty... more »

Here's an interesting article which shows that the modern tradition of eight hours of unbroken sleep might actually be unnatural, and quite different from what our ancestors typically did:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783

So, maybe the majority of our modern societies (even the people without recognized sleep disorders) are unwisely fighting against biology?

Perhaps a lot of people's health issues, such as... more »

The lymphatic vascular network connects the parenchymal interstitium through the nodes to the veins. Lymph serves as the transport pathway between these compartments and via its flow, controls interstitial fluid, macromolecular exchange, lipid absorption, immune cell trafficking and is critical to edema prevention/resolution, lipid metabolism, inflammation and immunity. Knowledge of this vascular network lags far behind... more »

In the late 20th century, the NHLBI cohorts were created as separate entities with specific research goals. The NHLBI’s funding of GWAS served as a powerful incentive for collaboration among the NHLBI-funded cohort studies. The creation of a scientific commons would provide a major national resource comprising the participants, their deeply phenotyped data, their biological samples, and the investigator expertise to... more »

In the human failing heart, it is the systems biology that ultimately fails: electrical, mechanical, and chemical perturbations in their function do not manifest in isolation, but critically impact on each other in health and disease. Investigation of human myocardium, unlike inbred rodent models, is challenging since no two humans are identical. There is a need for the collection and assessment of clinical patient data,... more »

Unravel the cellular & molecular mechanisms related to the vascular biology of sepsis and related cardiovascular collapse. The goal is to develop a new scientific framework for the prevention of sepsis related morbidity and mortality by applying novel approaches to discover new targets for biomarkers and therapy by promoting multidisciplinary research required for scientific cross-talk between complementary research disciplines... more »

Sepsis is the leading cause of death in hospitalized patients, the 3rd leading cause of death in all people in the US, the most common condition leading to widespread vascular collapse, among the most common causes of respiratory failure, and a frequent cause of acute cardiac dysfunction.