Veeraraghavan awarded $300,000 AHA grant

Congratulations to Rengasayee Sai Veeraraghavan, assistant professor, Biomedical Engineering (BME), for being awarded a 3 year, $300,000, grant from the American Heart Association. His research titled “Preventing Atrial Fibrillation by Preserving the Vascular Barrier and Intercalated Disk Nanodomains” seeks to explore new ways to treat atrial fibrillation (AF), which affects 2-3% of the US population. This project is in collaboration with Sandor Gyorke, PhD, professor (Physiology, OSU) and Przemyslaw Radwanski, PhD, assistant professor (Pharmacy, OSU).

Summary: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common form of irregular heartbeat, affecting 2-3% of the US population. AF is a progressive disease, growing in severity and complexity over time. It increases patients’ risk of stroke and further cardiovascular disease. Existing treatments focus on managing AF, but do not address underlying causes. Thus, we urgently need new treatments, which can arrest and even reverse the development of AF. AF patients have leaky blood vessels. This is recognized as a risk factor for stroke but we know little about its role in the progression of AF. Fluid leaked from blood vessels can accumulate between heart muscle cells. This can lead to swelling of tiny, nanometer-sized structures, called nanodomains, which help these cells pass electrical signals to each other. The consequence is irregularity of the heartbeat. Notably, we recently found nanodomains swelling in the hearts of AF patients. We will experimentally induce blood vessel leak and nanodomain swelling to understand how AF develops and how it can be stopped. Based on this we will explore two new ways to treat AF, preventing blood vessel from leaking, and preventing nanodomain swelling.