Texas A&M Health Science Center Researchers Focused on Heart Research and Care

By Scott Maier

Your heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times in your lifetime. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. But always beating. 

Unfortunately, this unique muscle does not always work the way it should. To emphasize the ongoing fight against heart diseases, February has been designated American Heart Month, and Texas A&M Health Science Center physicians and scientists have your cardiovascular care at heart.

Robert Schwartz, director of the HSC–Institute of Biosciences and Technology, studies how genes that create the heart are first turned on and function. Schwartz also applies this knowledge to generating new heart cells for diseased or damaged hearts. He has recently helped identify a key factor in human heart failure that may also be successful against hypertension and erectile dysfunction.

The human genome contains about 500 to 1,000 protein kinase genes that regulate many aspects controlling cell growth, movement and even cell death. ROCK-1, a protein kinase, is superactivated after its cleavage (split) with a caspase, an enzyme involved in the death of heart cells in a process called apoptosis, or programmed cell death.

 "We are trying to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the different disease processes and types of cardiovascular disease."

-Kenneth Baker, M.D.

The precise relationship among the many factors controlling “apoptosis” in cardiac overload, hypertrophy (abnormal heart muscle thickening) and failure may depend on basic triggering factors, Schwartz says.

“Once the process begins, it gathers speed, like a snowball rolling downhill,” Schwartz says. “Consequently, by inhibiting or removing ROCK-1 through therapeutics, heart failure and related diseases could someday be reduced. The therapeutic potential of these observations is attractive because inhibition of ROCK-1 appears relatively safe.”

Alongside Schwartz’s work, scientists at the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) in the College of Medicine strive to integrate research, training and clinical practice focusing on the heart and blood vessels.

“We are trying to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the different disease processes and types of cardiovascular disease,” says Kenneth Baker, professor of internal medicine at the College of Medicine and holder of the Mayborn Chair in Cardiovascular Research. “Our research focuses on trying to get to the root cause of cardiovascular issues.”

Baker heads the Division of Molecular Cardiology at the CVRI, where he and seven other researchers work to better understand cardiovascular disease. Along with his work at the College of Medicine, he is the chair of the American Heart Association (AHA) Research Committee and serves on the AHA board of directors.

The CVRI represents a cooperative venture among the College of Medicine, Scott & White and the Olin E. Teague VA Medical Center, with participating sites in College Station and Temple. Besides 70 basic scientists, a key CVRI resource is the more than 40 cardiovascular physicians from participating clinical institutions in Bryan–College Station and central Texas who specialize in cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery and vascular surgery.

A prime focus of basic research in the CVRI examines development, growth and physiological regulation of the cells that make up the heart and blood vessels. The research emphasizes molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular function and disease, as well as using state-of-the-art technologies to probe these phenomena.

From a clinical perspective, CVRI scientists are interested especially in atherosclerosis, inflammation, heart failure, ischemia, diabetes and hypertension.