Cardiovascular disease, which affects over seven million people in the UK, is a condition that affects the heart and circulatory system.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has awarded nine universities across the UK a total of £35 million to help strengthen world-leading cardiovascular disease research.
The funding, provided through the BHF’s Research Excellence Awards scheme, will support a research environment that fosters collaboration, inclusion and innovation to accelerate breakthroughs that save lives.
Cardiovascular disease, which affects around 7.6 million people in the UK, is the term used to describe conditions that affect the heart and circulatory system, including high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease and vascular dementia.
The nine universities which will receive a share of the funding include Imperial College London (ICL), King’s College London (KCL), the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Oxford and University College London.
Over the next five years, this funding will enable cutting-edge research tackling some of the biggest challenges in cardiovascular disease, including regenerative medicines to prevent and treat heart failure, using artificial intelligence to improve diagnostics, the impact of health disparities, genes and heart disease risk, vascular dementia, the role of the immune system in heart disease, and how type 2 diabetes causes heart failure.
ICL researchers are investigating heart and vascular diseases and wearable sensors such as smartwatches, aiming to contribute to the creation of a “digital twin” reflecting an individual’s cardiovascular function as an early intervention to predict disease onset and progression or reduce the severity of cardiovascular diseases.
This award to KCL will help advance our understanding of the management and treatment of heart failure and bring together multidisciplinary teams to address key research questions in heart failure, including developing new treatments and improving personalised therapy.
Professor Brian Williams, BHF’s chief scientific and medical officer, said: “We are delighted to announce this record funding to enable researchers to tackle some of the biggest challenges in cardiovascular disease research.
“This funding will attract the best and brightest minds, advance cutting-edge science and deliver life-saving discoveries that can change the devastation caused by heart and circulatory disease.”
