Partners of VIAgenomics are delighted to announce that a funding programme initiated by the DZHK and the British Heart Foundation (BHF), in which German and British scientists are working together, will receive 2.4 million euros.
We aim to improve the clinical diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases.
The project is entitled “Genetic discovery-based targeting of the vascular interface in atherosclerosis”. The joint project investigates how human genes affect the risk of suffering from heart disease. Studies with large groups of people – with and without heart disease – have identified changes in the DNA code that occur more frequently in patients and thus increase the risk of disease. In particular, genetic changes that have an influence on blood vessels and vessel walls will be investigated in this project.
We will combine innovative, computer-aided and laboratory-experimental methods to investigate some of these genes in detail. We then want to understand exactly how it affects the risk of disease. This knowledge will then be applied to new treatment methods in the long term.
The great opportunity for this consortium is the combination of state-of-the-art computer-aided methods and laboratory methods such as iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) and genome editing.