UF researchers take top honors in American Heart Association grant awards

University of Florida researchers took top honors in all three categories of grant awards offered this year by the American Heart Association’s Florida/Puerto Rico affiliate, earning more than $270,000 in funding for proposed studies on high blood pressure, obesity and heart attack prevention.

The awards, divided into categories for predoctoral fellows, postdoctoral fellows and senior investigators, were granted after a panel of reviewers evaluated each research proposal and assigned it a numerical score. UF had the highest-scoring entry in each of the three categories, and overall, 17 UF researchers received grants totaling $1,264,828 from the affiliate.

Jessica Staib, a second-year exercise physiology graduate student in UF’s College of Health and Human Performance, received the Outstanding Predoctoral Fellow of 2002 Award and a two-year grant totaling $38,000 for her proposed study of how exercise causes increased production of the antioxidant glutathione, which may provide protection from heart attack.

Staib’s graduate advisor is Scott K. Powers, Ph.D., Ed.D., director of UF’s Center for Exercise Science and an affiliate professor with the College of Medicine’s department of physiology and functional genomics. Powers is an expert on antioxidant defense systems in skeletal and cardiac muscle. Antioxidants are substances that neutralize damaging molecules, called free radicals, produced by the body’s chemical reactions. Powers is investigating how exercise can improve the heart’s antioxidant capacity and potentially reduce cardiac injury if a heart attack occurs.

The highest-scoring postdoctoral entry came from Issam Zineh, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of pharmacy practice, who received a two-year, $76,500 award to investigate multiple malformations in the gene that encodes the type-A natriuretic peptide receptor (NPR-A) — thought to play a role in high blood pressure, heart failure and other diseases.

Zineh is looking to see whether variations in the gene affect patients’ responses to a new drug, nesiritide—a hormone used to manage worsening heart failure in hospitalized patients. When this hormone binds to the type-A receptor, it causes fluid loss through urine, reduction in blood pressure and reduction in pulmonary vascular pressure.

Zineh seeks to identify gene mutations in the NPR-A gene, and to determine whether the gene is related to high blood pressure and heart failure prognosis. In addition, identifying these genetic variances may help predict which patients will receive benefit from or experience toxicity to nesiritide.

Zineh, who earned his Pharm.D. at Northeastern University in Boston and finished pharmacy practice residency at Duke University Medical Center, works as a cardiovascular pharmacogenomics fellow in the laboratory of Professor Julie Johnson, Pharm.D.

In the senior investigator category, Linda Hayward, Ph.D., an assistant professor at UF’s College of Veterinary Medicine, received the Robert J. Boucek, M.D., Research Award and a two-year grant totaling $120,000 for her proposed study of how a region in the brainstem contributes to the development and maintenance of high blood pressure.

The region, known as the parabrachial nucleus, contains receptors that process a chemical “messenger” called GABA-A that influences how quickly nerve impulses are transmitted. The region plays a role in the brain’s regulation of heart rate. Loss of short-term heart rate variation is a reliable predictor of high blood pressure. Hayward hopes that by learning more about the receptors’ function in the parabrachial nucleus, she can find a way to reduce high blood pressure in animal models.

Hayward is appointed to the College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of physiological sciences, and has an affiliate appointment with the College of Medicine’s department of neuroscience and UF’s McKnight Brain Institute.

Other UF researchers receiving grant awards included Lourdes Andino, B.S.; Kerry Cresawn, B.S.; Christopher Davis, B.S.; Boman Irani, B.S.; Thomas Fraites Jr., M.S., M.B.A.; Sharon Phaneuf, M.S.; Randy Braith, Ph.D.; Stephen Dodd, Ph.D.; Barry Drew, Ph.D.; Susan Frost, Ph.D.; Matthew Saxonhouse, M.D.; Patana Teng-umnuay, M.D., Ph.D.; Michael Weiss, M.D.; and Sergey Zharikov, Ph.D.