April 2024

CARDIOVASCULAR

FEINBERG INVESTIGATORS LEAD AHA HEART DISEASE RESEARCH INITIATIVE

Featuring: Matt Feinstein, ‘11 MD, ‘17 MS​
Feinberg investigators have been selected to lead a $15 million American Heart Association research initiative studying the role of inflammation in heart disease. 

Matt Feinstein, ‘11 MD, ‘17 MS, associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, will direct one of three centers in the country funded by the American Heart Association’s Strategically Focused Research Network (SFRN) on Inflammation in Cardiac and Neurovascular Disease, which will focus on understanding inflammatory responses and how to treat heart disease caused by inflammation.  

The American Heart Association funds Strategically Focused Research Networks as part of its mission to advance cardiovascular health for all. Research teams apply for the program’s four-year grants with novel and innovative ideas to better understand cardiovascular diseases impacted by each research network’s focus, the latest of which is inflammation.  

​While inflammation is critical for mounting immune responses against pathogens or injuries, inflammatory dysregulation can fuel numerous diseases, including in the heart. 

Research teams at Feinberg will undertake three different projects focused on inflammation in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.  

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, or HFpEF, is marked by excessive inflammation and accounts for more than half of all heart failure cases in the U.S. The condition also carries a significant public health burden: 50 percent of people diagnosed with HFpEF die within five years, according to the American Heart Association.  

The research initiatives will focus on immune cells, which regulate inflammation in the body, and how the cells are affected by stressors. Investigators will also analyze existing and novel approaches to modulating metabolism and immune cell responses in HFpEF with the ultimate goal of targeting inflammation to address the disease.  

​“We’re focusing on how inflammation gets turned on and off; fundamentally, immune cells are key for this,” Feinstein said. “But why do some people experience unresolving inflammation and others don’t? And how does this make some especially prone to progressive cardiometabolic disease and HFpEF? Our goal is to answer these critical questions. We’ll do this by bringing together patient-centered approaches and experimental model systems, all coalescing around the question of what’s turning inflammation on and off in the setting of cardiometabolic risk factors and HFpEF. The goal is that this knowledge will inform approaches that modulate harmful, unresolving inflammation to curb cardiometabolic disease and HFpEF.” 

Additional Feinberg faculty serving as principal investigators on projects in the Feinberg-based center include Sanjiv Shah, ’00 MD, the Neil J. Stone, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, Edward Thorp, PhD, the Frederick Robert Zeit Professor of Pathology, and Kiarri Kershaw, PhD, MPH,  associate professor of Preventive Medicine in the Division of Epidemiology. 

Christopher Botanga, PhD, professor of biology and principal investigator at Chicago State University (CSU) will serve as director of training phase synergy. This collaboration will increase the pipeline of opportunities — which includes the NUCATS supported Science Immersion Program — for CSU students to collaborate on specific projects as well as have near-peer mentoring from SFRN postdoctoral fellows. Obayed Raihan, assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at CSU, will help lead the project’s bioinformatics consortium, which will engage in shared methods development work on using bioinformatic approaches to understand immune-inflammatory contributors to cardiovascular disease.

​Other research teams selected as part of the network included investigators at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Michigan.  

“We are grateful to the AHA and excited for the opportunity to answer fundamental questions about how inflammation is regulated in cardiometabolic disease and HFpEF.” Feinstein said. “Ultimately, we hope that this knowledge will inform viable inflammation-modulating approaches to prevent and treat human disease.” 

This article was originally published in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine News Center on April 23, 2024. 
Matt Feinstein, ‘11 MD, ‘17 MS, associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, will lead the Feinberg arm of The American Heart Association’s Strategically Focused Research Network (SFRN) on Inflammation in Cardiac and Neurovascular Disease.
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