Christoph Rau, PhD (Assistant Professor, Genetics) has been awarded a new R01 grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) Stephen I. Katz Early Stage Investigator Research Program for his application titled “Elucidating the Role of Multinuclearity in Healthy and Diseased Mammalian Cardiomyocytes”.
The proposal combines bioinformatic, imaging, and next generation sequencing approaches to identify how changes in the nuclear code of multinucleated cardiomyocytes leads to differences in response to cardiac injury and stress. Upon completion, this grant will result in a more complete understanding of the role of multinuclearity and polyploidy in the mammalian heart, with subsequent revelation of numerous new avenues of research for diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to combat heart failure.