LOS ANGELES (Nov. 21, 2024) -- Ananth Karumanchi, MD, professor of Medicine, director of the Renovascular Research Center and the Medallion Chair in Vascular Biology at Cedars-Sinai, will lead a multicenter, international research team to study how the placenta affects the heart health of mothers and babies and whether it is predictive of heightened lifelong cardiovascular disease risk.
The study is funded by an $8 million grant from the highly respected Leducq Foundation and is one of only four awarded this year as part of the foundation’s 2024 International Networks of Excellence Program, which promotes collaborative global research in cardiovascular and neurovascular diseases.
Karumanchi—an expert on hypertension, or high blood pressure, during pregnancy—is the first Leducq Foundation grant recipient at Cedars-Sinai. He will work with an international network of investigators to identify how problems with the placenta—the organ in the uterus that connects mother and baby during pregnancy—can cause heart defects in newborns and lead to heart and blood vessel issues in the mother. The research team also aims to discover new treatments for these conditions.
“Heart disease is typically studied by looking at the heart, blood vessels, cholesterol and blood pressure,” said Karumanchi, the study’s principal investigator. “Thanks to the generous support of the Leducq Foundation, we can explore the origins of heart disease from a different perspective. Previous studies have linked placenta problems with cardiovascular diseases, including congenital heart disease, but scientists haven’t fully understood why. This new funding will help close that research gap.”
Didier Stainier, PhD, from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Germany, will co-lead the team of placental and developmental biologists, physician-scientists, cardiovascular biologists and epidemiologists from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Calgary in Canada, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares in Spain and the University of Bristol in England.
“Dr. Karumanchi has assembled an exceptional global investigative team of experts from various fields to tackle this important research and ultimately find new ways to understand and treat placenta-related heart diseases,” said Jeffrey A. Golden, MD, executive vice dean of Research and Education and director of the Burns and Allen Research Institute. “Having Cedars-Sinai at the helm of this collaboration speaks to our leadership in this pioneering field of placenta-related cardiovascular disease.”
Recently, Karumanchi identified a biomarker to help diagnose and predict preeclampsia, a hypertension-related disorder and one of the most common pregnancy complications, which also is thought to occur because of problems with the placenta.
Now, new genetic and molecular research tools are allowing Karumanchi and the international team to study the placenta in far greater detail. Growing collections of human tissue and blood samples from mothers and babies with heart problems will enable scientists to make progress in understanding the role of the placenta in maternal and fetal cardiovascular health and disease.
“What an incredible honor to receive this award from the Leducq Foundation,” Karumanchi said. “It’s recognition that our research team has a promising idea with exciting potential implications. We look forward to uncovering new ways to better understand, prevent and treat certain heart diseases.”
Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Five Things We Know About the Placenta—and a Few We Wish We Did
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