Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Heart diseases, led by congenital heart defects (CHD), are leading causes of pediatric
death(Cunningham, Walton, and Carter 2018). Occurring in 0.8% of livebirths, often with
lifelong health issues, CHD consumes over $7 billion annual U.S hospital expenditures.(CDC
2020) While many etiologies of CHD and other childhood heart disease are known and diseased
tissues are available from surgical interventions, key molecular responses to disease remain
uncertain due to the absence of a reference framework. To address this gap we propose to
define heterogenous cellular composition and transcriptional profiles of the healthy heart
during post-natal development. The heart undergoes substantial morphologic and
hemodynamic changes at birth: closure of embryonic shunts (ductus arteriosus and foramen
ovale), establishment of blood flow from the right ventricle into oxygenated lungs, and
dramatically increased left ventricular pressure to systemic levels. By year one of life, the
human hearts triples in size, right ventricular volumes increase 2-fold, and left ventricular walls
thickened.(Hew and Keller 2003a). Somatic growth and puberty further increases heart growth
to meet systemic hemodynamic requirements (Janz, Dawson, and Mahoney 2000). Studies of
rodent heart development provide some insight into these events(DeLaughter et al. 2016a; Li et
al. 2016; Talman et al. 2018), but cannot suffice for human data. Human hearts beat at 10-fold
lower rates for decades longer, express different protein isoforms, and distinctly regulate
calcium. To capture dynamic changes in cellular and transcriptional landscape of post-natal
development we will create a longitudinal pediatric heart atlas using infant, childhood, and
adolescent tissues.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 10/1/21 → 9/30/24 |
Funding
- Harvard University: $50,004.00
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.