ALABAMA: UAB researcher receive $3.7M grant to assess a “genome-first” approach to improving cardiometabolic health through heart hormones
Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Cardiovascular Disease have been awarded a $3.7M grant from the NIH National Heart Lung and Blood Institute to study how genetically determined differences in natriuretic peptide levels (heart hormones) regulate the handling of glucose metabolism and use of energy while resting and while exercising.
The grant is being used to fund a first-of-its-kind clinical trial that will recruit healthy individuals through a “genome-first” approach and perform deep metabolic phenotyping to understand the underlying mechanisms responsible for the regulation of the body’s metabolism through NPs.
“The study is employing an innovative ‘genome-first’ strategy to assess the role of NPs in regulating the cardiovascular and metabolic health of an individual,” said Pankaj Arora, M.D., associate professor of medicine and the director of the $11 million NIH-funded Cardiovascular Clinical and Translational Research Program and the UAB Cardiogenomics Clinic. “We will be enrolling individuals with and without a common genetic variant that predisposes them to have low NP levels. The study participants will then undergo a comprehensive metabolic assessment to understand the influence of genetically determined low NP levels.”
In addition to an innovative “genome-first” approach, the study by Arora and colleagues may also unravel a potentially new line of personalized therapeutics that follow the same “genome-first” precision medicine approach.