New Heart Association Funds Support UB Biomedical Research

Virginia Havel Glazier, a PhD student in microbiology and immunology, accepted the new funds on behalf of the university at a press conference promoting Wear Red Day, an AHA event advocating heart disease awareness, especially among women. 

Glazier, who is currently conducting research supported by an AHA pre-doctoral fellowship, can attest to the importance of AHA funding. 

“Acquiring funding is a key component of doing biomedical research in the academic field, so in that sense, my American Heart Association award is helping advance my career as a scientist,” she says.

Glazier’s research may identify potential therapeutic targets for infections caused by a pathogenic fungus that contributes to mortality in heart transplant patients.

UB faculty members were principal participants in the press conference, which was held to alert people about the importance of cardiovascular health and encourage them to wear red as a symbol of the fight against heart disease — women’s number one killer.

Glenna C. Bett, PhD, president of the advisory board for the American Heart Association’s Buffalo Niagara Division, hosted the event.

The associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and the department’s vice chair for research has studied differences in EKG recordings between men and women.

“Most women don’t notice the symptoms of heart disease until it’s too late, which is why heart disease has been called the silent killer,” says Bett, who also is a fellow of the American Heart Association and deputy director of the UB Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender. “Wear Red Day is about breaking that silence.”

Erie County Health Commissioner Gale R. Burstein, MD, MPH, clinical professor of pediatrics, issued a proclamation marking Feb. 7 as Wear Red Day in Erie County.

Funds raised through the event have supported cutting-edge research and AHA prevention and education programs over the past decade.

These efforts are “truly saving lives,” notes Liz Zulawski, AHA executive director.

“Because of research funded by the American Heart Association, we’ve been able to identify gender-specific inequalities leading to even more gender studies.”

Current UB research projects benefit from $1.8 million in AHA support, including the following affiliated with the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences:

• Multi-Scale Molecular Simulations of Cardiac Muscle Regulation
  Researcher: Wenjun Zheng, PhD, associate professor of physics, and a faculty member in the genetics, genomics and bioinformatics program

• Optimizing Cardiac Function in Aging Via a Novel Signaling Pathway
  
• Sestrin2 Signaling in the Aged Heart
  Researcher: Ji Li, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology

• Post-Transcriptional Regulation of Host Temperature Adaptation in Cryptococcus neoformans
  Researcher: Glazier
  

• In-Silico Electrophysiology of Stem-Cell Derived Cardiocytes
  Researcher: Randall Rasmusson, PhD, professor of physiology and biophysics

• Biomarker Release After Reversible Ischemia
  Researcher: Jun Qu, PhD, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences and a faculty member in both the PhD in biomedical sciences and genetics, genomics and bioinformatics programs

• Selective Modulation of Native NMDA Receptor Functions
  Researcher: Gabriela Popescu, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry