British Heart Foundation Leicester Centre of Research Excellence

Research themes

Discovery

Discovery theme leads

Our Discovery theme will continue to use genetics and related technologies to identify causes of cardiovascular disease and to predict who is at most risk of developing disease for targeting preventative strategies.

We will expand this work to rarer cardiovascular diseases. We will work with patients and the public to find out the best way to use genetic information in NHS practice.

Discovery aims

  • To maintain and enhance our established international excellence in genomic discovery whilst developing a new research focus on cardiovascular disease progression.
  • Explore the clinical utility of polygenetic risk prediction and identify new therapeutic targets through novel bioinformatic analysis of our data.
  • Expand our work in functional genomics of coronary artery disease and in parallel to our discovery work, add focus on new disease areas and broaden our functional understanding of telomere biology
  • Undertake multi-omic, clinical and imaging endotyping in heart failure with artificial intelligence analysis.
  • Use social science methods combined with our genomic knowledge to explore the enablers and barriers to clinical implementation of precision medicine.

Browse our discover theme researchers

 

Interventions

Intervention theme leads

To increase access to cardiovascular treatments for patients and find out which treatments are best for different people, our interventions theme will develop, test and refine new ways of treatment. 

We will translate our bench findings to bedside and use our clinical expertise to guide relevant laboratory studies to improve understanding of disease mechanisms to help develop new treatments.

Interventions aims

  • Arrhythmia: to reverse translate our findings in relation to the mechanisms of AF to better understand targets for intervention.
  • Create an expanded ex vivo platform to assess potential drug therapies for Aortic Stenosis.
  • Develop a trials platform to assess novel anti-obesity therapies across the spectrum of CVD.
  • Develop and assess novel interventions for stroke and intracranial haemorrhage (ICH).
  • Undertake clinical trials to limit organ injury and address the most important questions in cardiac surgery.
  • Implement effective novel therapies in PAD with improved data integration.

Browse our interventions theme researchers

Populations

Populations theme leads

Our populations theme will determine how cardiovascular diseases and other common conditions are associated with each other. We will help identify who might benefit from interventions that target more than one condition at a time, and the combinations of treatments that different patients might require. We will work with different ethnic groups to identify which treatments are best for each group.

Populations aims

  • Characterise inequalities in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease and associated cardio-metabolic-renal MLTCs.
  • Identify modifiable environmental, lifestyle, and behavioural risk factors and mediators of inequalities in cardio-metabolic-renal diseases.
  • Work with underserved populations to co-design the selection of research questions, data interpretation, and outcome dissemination strategies.

Our populations theme researchers

Our achievements

Discovery theme

Our Discovery team continues to publish world leading research in top scientific journals eg (PMID 39215600). A major highlight is a new British Heart Foundation (BHF) Project Grant awarded to Professor Leong Ng, supporting the development of personalised biomarkers to improve treatment for people with heart failure.

Professor Matt Bown has also been honoured as an NIHR Senior Investigator—one of the highest recognitions in UK health research. This award reflects his outstanding contributions to shaping clinical practice, mentoring future leaders, and improving patient outcomes.

Interventions theme

Our Interventions researchers have continued to publish extensively including multiple outputs from the STEP-HFpEF programme, novel weight loss therapies (PMID:40544432/40544433) and the EVOLVED (39466640) trial in aortic stenosis in collaboration with the Edinburgh CRE. The theme has secured more than £10 million to launch new clinical trials.

We are also celebrating several major leadership appointments:

Populations theme

Our cross-disciplinary collaborations, spanning population, physical, and environmental sciences, continue to deliver high-impact research on cardio-renal-metabolic health (PMID:40273067/40722166/40259497/40570864), environmental determinants (40897017/39772360), and lifestyle interventions (40394706/39558868). We have secured more than £30 million in new funding, including:

  • UKRI E3: helping people from diverse backgrounds with—or at risk of—multiple long term conditions live longer, healthier lives
  • A new NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Chemical Threats and Hazards
  • A NIHR Global Health Transformation award
  • Continued support from NIHR ARC East Midlands.

Working closely with public health agencies, industry and academic partners, we are building one of the UK’s leading hubs for data driven population health research, with major studies planned on multiple long term conditions and ethnic health inequalities.

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