Illinois Medicine

campus news C H I C A G O P E O R I A R O C K F O R D C H A M P A I G N - U R B A N A ROOTS OF HEART FAILURE M ORE THAN 5.5 MILLION Americans suffer from heart failure—one of the leading causes of death, disability and hospitaliza- tion in the developed world—and 670,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to the American Heart Association. Aiming to identify markers for diagnosis and targets for cures, College of Medicine researchers in Chicago have received a five-year grant of more than $12 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to probe both the acquired and familial causes of heart failure. The funding supports an ongoing program-project grant led by R. John Solaro, PhD, distinguished university professor and head of physiology and biophysics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Like all such grants, this one interlinks the unique expertise of all investigators involved, who include: Brenda Russell, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics; E. Doug- las Lewandowski, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics; and Pieter de Tombe, PhD, chair of physiology at Loyola University Chicago. "We're looking at the overarching problem of the maladaptive changes the heart undergoes that lead into a vicious cycle of failure," Solaro says. "The sum is greater than the individual parts." The projects expand an ongoing program that Solaro and de Tombe have College gets $12 million grant to investigate cardiac disorders led for 10 "extraordinarily productive" years that has spawned dozens of papers in top-tier journals, the total of which impressed the institute's grant- makers, says Russell, who is executive associate vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Solaro and de Tombe lead projects that investigate energy consumption by the molecular motors of the cardiac muscle, called sarcomeres, which generate the pressure to pump blood through the arteries. The ongoing program's pilot studies have examined therapies for common familial cardiac disorders that currently have no cure. Russell leads a project that looks into how heart-muscle cells grow and how sarcomeres come together dur- ing that growth. Lewandowski focuses on the metabolic pathways that ener- gize the sarcomeres and how energy supply and demand are coordinated. Lewandowski notes that his work brings "a slightly new perspec- tive" to the ongoing program. Cel- lular metabolism is a topic of intense interest because scientists think "the interplay between protein function and expression in the heart, and metabolic processes in the cell, can either make or break the contractile function of the heart." $3 MILLION FOR 3-TESLA C OLLEGE OF MEDICINE RESEARCHERS in Chicago have been awarded a highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant out of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help develop its state-of-the-art, 3-tesla magnetic resonance imaging facility dedicated to research (see "A Better View," Spring 2010, page 7). University of Illinois at Chicago's strong track record and reputation in neuroimaging research underpinned the successful bid for the federal stimulus MRI research in Chicago gets federal grant through stimulus package funds, says Dr. X. Joe Zhou, director of MRI physics at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research and principal investigator on the grant. "There was tremendous competition from around the country for these imaging ARRA grants, with only the very top few percent of applications receiving funding," says Zhou, professor of radiology, neurosurgery and bioengineering. "The grant is a result of many years of effort by a large number of investigators on the UIC campus, and the strong support from the administrations of multiple departments, the UIC College of Medicine and the university." 4 | WINT ER 2 011

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