Scientists from the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) and Froedtert Hospital will use a one-year, $50,000 grant from the Clinical and Translational Science Institute of Southeast Wisconsin (CTSI) to research a specific type of heart failure and pinpoint biomarkers that could help with earlier diagnosis and treatment. Researchers will focus on identifying biomarkers involved in cardiac dysfunction, which might allow clinicians to diagnose and decide a treatment route before irreversible cardiac damage affects a patient.
The project, titled “Biomarkers in Diastolic Dysfunction/Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction,” is one of 19 pilot projects CTSI is supporting in 2012. Each study aims to lead to major future research support, and each project examines discoveries that could be applied to clinical practice and community health. All are led by CTSI’s eight partnering institutions: the Medical College of Wisconsin, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, UW-Milwaukee, Froedtert Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, the VA medical Center, and the BloodCenter of Wisconsin.
Dr. Jennifer Strande, assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at MCW and cardiologist at Froedtert Hospital, will serve as primary investigator for the biomarker study, and Dr. Shama Mirza, assistant professor of biochemistry at MCW, will be the co-primary investigator.
CTSI belongs to a national consortium of top medical research institutions. The CTSI program is led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which is affiliated with the National Institutes of Health.
