Oct. 7, 2008 College News - The Medical College of Wisconsin has received a four-year, $1,525,648 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop computer modeling tools to analyze differences between healthy and diseased hearts. The study may lead to better understanding of how the heart works and fails on a molecular, cellular and tissue level.
Daniel A. Beard, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and a member of the Center for Biotechnology and Bioengineering, is principal investigator for the grant.
The study will use computer-generated models to focus specifically on how mechanisms that control metabolic processes in the heart fail under a variety of circumstances. A better understanding of these processes could lead to more advanced diagnostic technologies that could be capable of detecting these changes earlier than current diagnostic technology permits.