American Heart Association – Funding Vital New Heart
The American Heart Association (AHA) funds critical cardiovascular health research as a foundational mission. Since 1949, the organization has invested more than $5.7 billion into new research, with ongoing AHA-funded projects numbering 1,700 and representing $479 million in allocated capital. In 2022-23 alone, the organization provided $178 million in funding toward 868 new projects.
Throughout its history, AHA has assisted in launching numerous careers in brain and cardiovascular research, including 15 scientists who achieved the Nobel prize. Over the past five years, the funding landscape has changed dramatically, with funding for scientists from underrepresented ethnic and racial groups more than doubling.
The impact of such funding in legitimizing research can be substantial, with each $1 of AHA early-career faculty development awards generating, on average, 7.8 dollars in additional funding. The volunteer resources required to arrange such financing levels are immense. In 2022-23, 2,234 peer review volunteers evaluated 3,775 funding proposals. Of these, 1,996 applications, representing $535 million in requested funds, did not receive support.
One of the major funding events each year centers on selecting three Merit Award winners, who receive $1 million each toward researching heart disease causes and treatments. Announced in January, the winners for 2024 spanned researchers in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and California.
A Stanford University School of Medicine professor, Dr. Philip S. Tsao, is researching the impact of vaping on abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) risks. AAA involves a weakening of a major artery in the abdomen, with its rupture often resulting in death. As the researcher describes it, around 90 percent of people who suffer from AAA have a tobacco history of use. Yet, this relationship has been little studied, and there is almost no data tracking e-cigarettes and vaping and the prevalence of such aneurysms.
Associated with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Dr. Daniel J. Rader studies large-scale human genetics as a pathway of altered lipid metabolism, which can result in heart disease. A focus is on new genes expressed in the liver, which modulate the blood lipids implicated in many forms of heart disease. The research aims to unlock core cellular and biological mechanisms contributing to cardiovascular disease risk.
Finally, Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Joseph Loscalzo is working on uncovering links between heart disease and naturally occurring chemicals in foods (or the foods themselves). Employing high-speed computers and algorithmic modeling, he has identified 135,000 such chemicals. A key focus is understanding how food chemicals interact with cellular proteins and which chemicals help protect the heart. This potentially lays a framework for developing new heart-protective drugs.
