Program Rationale

Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world and is a contributing factor to a number of other important diseases that are increasingly prevalent. However, because the cardiovascular system is regulated by a complex interplay between many organ systems and environmental factors, significant questions remain in regard to the etiology, progression, and treatment of cardiovascular disease.  The reductionist approaches made possible by the rapid advances in molecular biology over the last several decades have been essential for advancing our knowledge of cardiovascular cell function and pathology. However, they have also reduced the number of scientists that are broadly trained in the many approaches, model systems, and technologies that will be required to adequately study such a genetically complex and multi-factorial disease. The completion of the human genome project and the parallel development of many high throughput “omics” approaches have dramatically increased our ability to analyze complex systems in ways that that were unimaginable even 10 years ago and have compounded the need for collaboration between scientists from different fields and disciplines. Given that the next major challenge for cardiovascular biologists will be to understand how genetic variation and environmental factors interact to influence cardiovascular development and disease, it will be essential to train cardiovascular biologists who are capable of implementing novel and integrative approaches.

In response to these demands, we established the Integrative Vascular Biology (IVB) Pre-doctoral T32 Training Program at UNC in 2002 to promote a collaborative interdisciplinary training environment for pre-doctoral students in the cardiovascular field. The IVB Program combines the breadth and depth of the cardiovascular research faculty at UNC with other research strengths at our institution starting with genetic model systems and state of the art cell biology and imaging, and recently expanding to high throughput genomic and proteomic analyses and computational biology. The overall goal of the IVB Program is to provide trainees with the interdisciplinary and collaborative skills necessary to productively extend their thesis work into new, innovative, and productive directions.