Coronary heart disease (CAD) remains the leading cause of death in the United States. One in 20 adults age 20 and older in the United States have CAD; someone dies from cardiovascular disease every 33 seconds.
We want to get to the heart of the matter: What are the underlying mechanisms of organ formation, how are patterns generated and how do cells and tissue types assume their correct fates and functions. More specifically, how do proteins called transcription factors control the development and function of cardiac cells and how mutations in those factors can cause congenital heart defects, which impact 1 in 100 newborns.
The heart is one type of muscle. Skeletal muscle is another, These are the muscles of voluntary movement. They make up 30% to 40% of your total body mass, and when they begin to decay and decline, devastating conditions result, such as muscular dystrophies. Muscle wasting can also be a hallmark of aging. Muscle stem cells offer great promise as a therapeutic remedy. We are exploring the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that regulate muscle stem cells in vivo.
Director’s Statement
“The muscles of your heart and body make life possible. Our mission is to better understand how they are formed, grow, function and fail, and in those answers, find new treatments for millions of people.”
Aging is inevitable, but how it happens can be optimized. By parsing how biological processes change over time and under different conditions, we reveal how aging affects disease and how development and regeneration can be modified and improved to promote healthy aging.
Aug 23, 2024
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