What are the roles of RNAs (e.g., microRNAs, long non-coding RNAs, etc.) in myocardial growth, adaptation, and injury healing response?

What are the unknown elements of the human virome, and what host-virome interactions affect the heart, lung, and blood health and diseases?

A major challenge has been the need for in vitro culture systems and animal models for studying the virome, which is a significant limitation that has forced current studies of the virome to be mostly descriptive. NHLBI has supported one research group to identify human virome and... more »

What specific roles do protein glycosylation and protein complex formation on stable and activated cellular membranes play in inherent immunogenicity and antibody formation to life-saving therapies for rare blood disorders?

 

NHLBI leadership and collaboration with NIAID is needed to bring this combined expertise to bear on the understanding and prevention of this most significant complication of hemophilia therapy.

What is the level of population variation of gene regulatory networks in heart, lung, and blood and sleep disease mechanisms? Can we use different animal model strains to identify key factors in networks and modifier genes?

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 »

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 interplay of the micro- and macroenvironment and their effect on gene and protein expression and overall effect on phenotypes in HLBS systems?

 

Need for unbiased approaches for information capture. Technologies for capturing real time, dynamic and contextual information

What are the regional variations in cellular and molecular characteristics (from epigenetics to microbiome) in the lung, and what controls these variations?

Is there a critical window of growth and development for maximizing lung function?

How do lung progenitors recognize stem cell niches, and what cell-cell interactions mediate normal repair?

What are the molecular and cellular responses in the lung that occur after environmental stimuli that predict homeostatic resilience or transition to disease, disorder, or aging?

What is the best method to develop an integrated map of the expression patterns of the vasculature (RNA, protein, and epigenome) within each organ system?

 

Sampling standards and quality control are major outstanding issues.

What is the level of intra-tissue variation of cardiac development gene regulatory networks at single cell resolution?

Can we "reprogram" the immune system to improve outcomes of heart, lung, and hematopoietic cell transplants?

While NIAID is a major funder of immunology research, we are a major contributor to stem cell research. Our resources could be combined, where NIAID would support this approach for autoimmune diseases, and we would support work in tolerance for transplants.

If the NCI also wants to collaborate on co-stimulatory... more »

To eventually modulate pathologic communication processes employing new therapeutics, there is a need to better understand the transcellular communication between blood cells and components of the vascular layer in vivo.