Research themes

Discovery theme leads

• Professor Matt Bown
• Dr Tom Webb

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

Intervention theme leads

• Professor Gerry McCann
• Dr Anvesha Singh

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 theme leads

• Professor Kamlesh Khunti
• Dr Claire Lawson

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