Arash Kheradvar Receives a Transatlantic Career Development Award from Leducq Foundation
Award is in cardiovascular and neurovascular research
Assistant Professor Arash Kheradvar, M.D., Ph.D. in Department of Biomedical Engineering has been named as a recipient of the 2011-2012 Career Development Award from Leducq Foundation as a senior investigator. Kheradvar received the award based on his research entitled “Flow through the Right Heart after Repair of Tetralogy of Fallot: anImage-Based Modeling Approach.”
Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is a common form of cyanotic congenital heart disease (CHD), which accounts for approximately 7 to 10 percent of live-born patients with CHD. The major anatomical feature of TOF is pulmonary and subpulmonary stenosis, a subaortic ventricular septal defect (VSD) and hypertrophy of the right ventricle (RV). The clinical presentation of patients with TOF mainly depends upon the degree of right ventricular outflow tract obstruction, and most likely requires surgical intervention in the first year of life. The total repair technique greatly improves the hemodynamic functionand decreases the risk of sudden cardiac death. The success of surgical procedures has resulted in improved survival of these patients. However, these patients require follow-up and specialized care due to the late development of complications related to the progressive remodeling.
“Our central hypothesis is that the abnormal patterns of flow through the RV in TOF hearts contributes to dissipation of the kinetic energy of flow and reduces the efficiency of RV function, promoting its failure,” Kheradvar states.
The proposed work to be conducted partly in London, England, in collaboration with Dr. Philip Kilner, M.D., Ph.D., at Royal Brompton Hospital, will test this hypothesis and quantify the magnitude, location and timing of fluid energy dissipation through the normal right hearts, and in repaired-TOF hearts.
The Career Development Awardis aimed to fund outstanding investigators whose research would be enhanced from international collaboration. The competition is among the senior investigators from Europe and North America with research focused on cardiovascular and neurovascular areas.
The Leducq Foundation is a private, endowment-based foundation based in Paris, France, with a mission to improve human health through international efforts to combat cardiovascular and neurovascular disease.
