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A researcher from the University of Texas at the College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation in Arlington will use a $ 634,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of T cells in cardiovascular disease among the elderly.
The NIH Five-Year Grant to Daniel Wayne Trott, Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, is a career development award. Known as the K01 Grant, it is designed to provide an enhanced mentorship to promising young faculty to learn techniques that will increase their research profiles.
Trott, who joined the faculty early in 2018, will work with three mentors on this study: Paul Fadel, Professor of Kinesiology at UTA and Associate Dean at College Research; Tony Donato, badociate professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Utah; and Jorg Goronzy, professor of medicine at Stanford. All three are nationally recognized cardiovascular researchers.
Trott noted that age is the most predictive factor for cardiovascular disease. His preliminary research shows that T cells infiltrate arteries in preclinical models.
"These studies are designed to give us an answer as to whether this happens in the elderly," he said. "We know that there is an increased risk of cardiovascular disease with aging.We believe that aging T cells could be involved in this increased risk."
The studies build on Trott's work as the principal investigator of the College's Integrative Immunology Laboratory, which focuses on how the immune system and arteries interact in older adults.
Part of this grant will help to learn how to perform clinical research on humans. Next year, with his team, he will start recruiting for study 54 human subjects belonging to three age categories: 18-30 years old, 35-50 years old and 55-75 years old.
"We are looking for generally healthy adults," he said. "We want to look at the effects of aging independently of the many age-related diseases we want to discover how the aging immune system interacts with the arteries."
Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Elizabeth Merwin described the award as a boon for the college.
It's a win for us in so many ways. This award supports career-enhancing research training and supports a study that can inform how we approach the treatment of heart disease in our aging population. "
Elizabeth Merwin, Dean, College of Nursing and Health of Innovation
Source:
University of Texas at Arlington
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