Often under recognized, the cardiac endothelial cells are highly abundant in the heart, and may have important roles in modulating cardiac function, besides simply serving as structural component of blood vessels. Evidences of ours and others have indicated an emerging role of cardiac endothelial cells signaling to cardiomyocytes to mediate important pathophysiological responses. Nonetheless, detailed mechanisms of... more »

There is a need to develop an artificial and functional hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche that allows for the expansion of repopulating HSCs.

Fibrosis can affect essentially any tissue or organ, including the heart, lungs and bone marrow. Effective anti-fibrotic therapy has long been elusive, and transplantation has been the only therapy capable of restoring patient function as fibrotic diseases progress to organ failure. Although these diseases present clinically with organ-specific manifestations, they are now thought to share many common pathogenetic mechanisms.... more »

Critical Challenge

How can the use of CAR T-cell and checkpoint blockade strategies be optimized in order to cure hematologic diseases?

NIH estimates up to 23.5 million Americans suffer from autoimmune disease (AD) and up to 24 million from heart diseases. As a result, NIH and AHA estimates the annual direct health care costs for AD to be in the range of $100 billion and $200 billion for heart and stroke diseases. Yet this area of research has been neglected and underfunded. The proposition is for NHLBI to partner with other NIH institutes dealing with... more »

There are many significant questions in CVD prevention that cross the disciplines represented by the different institutes. For example, the obesity epidemic, poor nutrition, and physical inactivity are relevant to CVD, neurological disease, diabetes, and cancer. Tobacco use is directly relevant to cancer and CVD. Social determinants and disparities affect multiple diseases and outcomes. Reducing obesity will require interventions... more »

There are various reasons responsible for patients’ non-adherence. One of them is insufficient or lack of education about medications and equipment required for their treatment.

How can the study of rare diseases inform our understanding of common diseases?

Can we develop model systems for the high throughput screening of new and existing agents as possible therapies for rare diseases?

We are focusing a lot on the genes that may be protective or harmful to our lives. But what about the regulation of genes in response to external stimulations, such as psychosocial and/or environmental, that are probably more accountable for whether we live healthier or not.