By Matt Thacker
Researchers at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute (CII), a research partnership between U of L and Jewish Hospital, will soon receive an important financial boost from the Gheens Foundation, one of the largest education and research foundations in Kentucky.
The foundation recently pledged $1.5 million over a three-year period to the institute to help create the Gheens Foundation Biosensor Research Center.
Ellen de Graffenreid of the U of L Health Sciences Center, said the money comes in addition to support from Jewish Hospital, Kosair Charities, the Kentucky Office for the New Economy and Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The funds will aid in constructing a 75,000-square-foot, five-story building which will be located on the Health Sciences Campus, according to the Gilbane Building Company.
The project has a projected total price tag of around $28 million and will include biomedical research labs, operating and recovery rooms, training facilities, mock circulation labs, administrative offices, a surgical research facility and medical imaging areas.
The new center will work to improve existing heart-assist devices, making them more compatible with patients’ bodies, and further biosensor research, creating new treatment options for patients with heart disease.
Dr. Laman Gray, a pioneer in the cardiovascular research field who will be the center’s surgical director, said the grant would also help bring new researchers to the institute.
“It’s going to be huge,” he said. “We’re very excited about it because it will help us to get the research off the ground and running.”
Research at the new center will add to work Gray has spearheaded in recent years: The doctor and his team performed the first heart transplant procedure in Kentucky, and implanted the first artificial heart in the world. According to http://www.heartinnovation.org, Gray and Dr. Robert Dowling, a U of L professor, have performed over 300 heart transplant procedures at Jewish Hospital.
However, the Web site also says that about 400,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with advanced heart failure, and that only five percent will survive for five years or longer. Additionally, Kentucky has the fifth-highest number of deaths per capita annually due to heart failure.
The CII plans to reverse that trend through new biosensor technology. The sensors measure body conditions such as blood pressure, enzyme levels and the metabolic needs of the heart, and relay the information to doctors.
Using data collected by the new sensors within patients’ bodies, surgeons hope to reduce the number of rejected heart-assist and artificial implant devices. The new technology could also lead to improved heart devices that will be more compatible with the human body, and could provide information about helping the heart regenerate itself without implants or transplants.
Gray and others at U of L and Jewish Hospital have put their hearts into cardiovascular research for years, and now rely on financial support from places such as the Gheens Foundation to continue that research.
“The Gheens Foundation has made our community better by supporting many areas [such as] medical research,” said Keith Inman, executive director of the Jewish Hospital Foundation.
The new research center is expected to be completed in October 2006.
