BBC faculty Dr. Daniel Beard, PhD, received a new RO1 grant titled “Integrated Modeling of Cardiac Metabolism and Transport” in the amount of $1,487,173 for four years, beginning on September 1, 2008. The overall goals of this grant include (1) to apply cardiac tissue computer modeling tools to quantify and analyze physiological mechanisms controlling metabolic fluxes in the working heart, (2) to predict the metabolic response to ischemia, (3) to determine how control mechanisms fail in a variety of pathophysiological settings and to (4) evaluate the metabolic effects of the proposed therapeutic strategies and suggest new strategies.

For that, a deeply validated computer model simulating oxygen and substrate transport in cardiac tissue and intracellular energy metabolism will be developed and evaluated. Technology will be developed to determine how and why physiological control mechanisms fail in heart disease and to evaluate how certain current and proposed metabolic strategies for treatment of heart diseases are expected to affect energy metabolism.