A recent grant awarded to the Temple University School of Medicine will help train its students to be on the cutting edge of finding novel approaches to treat cardiovascular diseases.


“Students will be trained to perform state of the art research in cardiovascular disease, setting them up for first rate jobs of the future,” said Steven R. Houser, Ph.D., FAHA, grant recipient and director of the Cardiovascular Research Center (CVRC) at Temple University School of Medicine.


The $128,650 grant received from the National Institutes of Health this fall will allow the Center to expand the size of its current training program for doctoral and medical students, and enhance its NIH-funded research projects.


Many cardiovascular science training programs in the field now focus too narrowly on specific new sciences and technologies. The training program at Temple will keep students up-to-date on the latest, and give them an in-depth understanding of how the entire body functions as an integrated system. This will better prepare them to design projects and employ new therapies after graduation, Houser said.


Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and is a major cause of disability. It also claims nearly 700,000 lives each year in this country. That is about 29 percent of all U.S. deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control.


Cardiovascular diseases include coronary heart disease (heart attacks), raised blood pressure (hypertension), peripheral artery disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease and heart failure.


The Cardiovascular Research Center is a group of basic and clinical scientists with a broad mission to better define the causes and cures of cardiovascular diseases. Currently, the Center is focusing on research in cellular and molecular bases of human heart failure, and biology of cardiac recovery and reverse remodeling.

—Written by Anna Nguyen