Dr. Matthew Kay and Dr. David Mendelowitz (School of Medicine and Health Sciences) are the Multiple Principal Investigators (MPIs) on a newly awarded four-year, $2.33 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The project, “Novel Mechanisms that Restore Cardiac Parasympathetic Activity Limit Arrhythmias and Cardiac Dysfunction After Myocardial Infarction,” will use chemogenetic and optogenetic technologies to study how to control the cardiac parasympathetic neural system to protect the heart from damage during and after a heart attack.
The project brings together an outstanding cross-disciplinary team of GW investigators, including Dr. Kate Schunke (BME), Dr. Christopher Spurney (Children's National Hospital), Dr. Olga Dergacheva (School of Medicine and Health Sciences), and Dr. Jhansi Dyavanapalli (School of Medicine and Health Sciences). Dr. Mendelowitz is the contact MPI for the project.