Research Division of Cardiology: Department of Medicine: School of Medicine: Emory University

It is our belief that academic cardiology divisions have a mandate to perform basic, "translational" and clinical research related to cardiovascular biology, pharmacology and disease. Within the cardiology division at Emory, we are fortunate to have assembled a very interactive and productive team of cardiovascular investigators. In the basic research laboratories, we have made numerous contributions in vascular biology, particularly related to the areas of atherosclerosis and hypertension, as well the biology of oxygen radicals and their role in both normal vessel function and vascular disease. For more than a decade, our research team has been at the forefront of investigating how vascular cells produce reactive oxygen species and how these molecules affect vascular tone, growth, lesion formation and remodeling. While our basic research has largely focused on vascular biology, we have strong programs in ion channel and cardiac myocyte research. Our basic research program encompasses a broad range of methodologies, including molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics, cell biology, stem cell research and physiology. Our successful basic investigators are well funded. All have at least one NIH or AHA grant, and we have the equivalent of three NIH program project grants to support basic research in vascular biology. Other sources of funding include the American Heart Association, the Veterans Administration Hospital, the Whitaker Foundation for Biomedical Engineering, NASA, pharmaceutical companies and philanthropic support.

Our basic research program also includes studies of human physiology, and in particular examination of endothelial function in human subjects with a variety of diseases. Studies from our division center on how lipid-lowering affects endothelial function, how hypertension alters vascular function and how plasma markers of disease correlate with endothelial function. A large recently completed study focused on novel plasma markers of oxidant stress and their correlation with vascular disease and dysfunction.

In addition to our strong basic research program, Emory has enormous strength in the area of clinical trials and clinical epidemiology. The Emory Center for Outcomes Research (ECOR), serves as a tremendous resource for our division, the Department of Medicine and other departments at Emory. ECOR provides biostatistical consultation and analysis and serves as a focal point for collaborations between many of our clinical investigators.

The Andreas Gruentzig Center, directed by Dr. John Douglas, and has been at the forefront of research in interventional cardiology for the past decade and a half. The Gruentzig center has been very actively involved in clinical investigations of mechanisms of restenosis, development of new strategies to prevent restenosis and development of new interventional techniques, including brachytherapy, and recently, medication-eluting stents.

Our Clinical Electrophysiology Program, together with our Center for Heart Failure, has been actively involved in a multicenter trial examining the efficacy of biventricular pacing for treatment of heart failure and has led the nation in enrollment in this trial. Other studies performed by our EP service have examined the use of implantable defibrillators and mechanisms of atrial fibrillation.

Emory has been and continues to be involved in numerous multicenter clinical trials, many of which involve ECOR, and for which ECOR has served as a coordinating center. Some of these include the recently published TACTICS, COURAGE, HERS, MADIT, EAST, BARI and many others. We are constantly enrolling subjects in these trials, and should you be interested in participating as a volunteer in one of these studies, please consult our Clinical Trials Homepage.

An important aspect of our research program is training of young scientists. It is our desire that all of our cardiology fellows be competitive for a position in academic medicine upon leaving our program. To do this, it is essential that the fellows have specialized research training. Our cardiology fellowship program has two tracks, the basic cardiovascular scientist track, and the clinician investigator track. Fellows identify a mentor among the faculty, and are provided with ample protected time to perform research. Close, day-to-day interactions between the fellows and their respective mentors provide guidance not only with the research project, but also manuscript and grant writing, data analysis, oral presentations and planning of research projects. In addition to Cardiology fellows, we have been fortunate to have a large number of other research trainees who come to the Cardiology Division at Emory yearly. These include graduate students from Emory and the Georgia Institute of Technology and post-doctoral Ph.D. fellows from the United States and other countries. Young scientists from Japan, Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Chile, Romania, China and Australia have spent one or more years as post-doctoral fellows. This has made our institutional research program a truly international effort.

Many of our research trainees are funded by an NIH training grant, which is now in its seventh year. Other fellows are funded by individual National Research Service Awards (NRSAs), American Heart Fellowships, NIH grants and from internal sources of funding.

Our research trainees have been extremely successful. Most publish several papers as a result of their work while at Emory, generally in prestigious Journals such as Circulation, Circulation Research, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Nature and Science. Many of our past fellows now have faculty positions at universities throughout the world and have developed very successful research programs of their own.

Overall, our research programs within cardiology represent many closely integrated, vibrant, and productive efforts that span the gamut of investigational approaches. Because of our continued commitment to cardiovascular investigation, we anticipate continued success and growth of this very important aspect of Emory Cardiology.

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Research in the Division of Cardiology

Basic Science Principal Investigators and Research Laboratories

Clinical Trials and Research

Lab Sites