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Salloum receives competitive NHLBI grant

Fadi Salloum, Ph.D., receives R35 Emerging Investigator Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Fadi Salloum, Ph.D., the Natalie N. and John R. Congdon Sr. Endowed Chair at Pauley Heart Center, has received an R35 Emerging Investigator Award from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Salloum’s award was one of fewer than 10 EIA NHLBI grants awarded nationwide this year.

Headshot of Fadi Salloum, Ph.D. Fadi Salloum, Ph.D.

The seven-year, $5.4 million award will fund Salloum’s research program, Managing Cardiac Toxicities of Cancer Therapy. The goal of the research is to better understand the basis of cardiotoxicity — damage to the heart caused by chemotherapy drugs — and inform the discovery of new methods of prevention for chemotherapy-induced
heart failure.

“The overall focus in our lab is on heart failure, which may be attributed to several causes, including myocardial infarction, or heart attack; FDA-approved chemotherapeutic drugs with known cardiotoxic effects; and genetic diseases such as muscular dystrophy that cause severe heart failure,” said Salloum, a professor and associate chair for research in the Department of Internal Medicine at VCU School of Medicine.

The flexibility offered by the grant will allow Salloum, also a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, to pursue all of these areas of research under a single funding mechanism, thus providing more time for mentoring trainees in the lab.

The Emerging Investigator Award is a program designed to promote scientific productivity and innovation by providing continuous support for researchers who are primary investigators on at least two active NHLBI R01-equivalent awards and whose research record demonstrates progressive promise. Salloum has been conducting research on topics such as how hydrogen sulfide protects the heart and how a pregnancy hormone called relaxin could have protective effects on the heart.

Notably, NIH says the Emerging Investigator Award is designed to fund a program, rather than just a project, which will allow Salloum the freedom and flexibility to explore groundbreaking research and explore new directions. It will also open up new opportunities for collaboration, according to Pauley Heart Center Director Greg Hundley, M.D., especially in conjunction with the center’s established clinical cardio-oncology program, and has the potential  to move the field forward and make an impact on the cardiovascular health of cancer survivors.

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