Research into how stress affects the brain and how these changes may affect the heart and translational research focused on molecular signaling by the heart both got significant support from the American Heart Association.

The American Heart Association issued two Merit Awards, each totaling $1 million to be distributed over 5 years, to two innovative researchers: Walter Koch, PhD, the W.W. Smith Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine from the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, and Michelle Albert, MD, a professor of medicine and the director of the Center for the Study of Adversity and Cardiovascular Disease at the University of California, San Francisco.

“The goal of the merit award program is to support visionary leaders who are undertaking high-risk projects whose outcomes could revolutionize the treatment for cardiovascular disease in the era of precision medicine,” said Ivor Benjamin, MD, president-elect of the American Heart Association and professor and director of the Cardiovascular Center at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin.

The American Heart Association, the world’s leading voluntary health organization devoted to fighting cardiovascular disease, has funded more than $4 billion in cardiovascular research since 1949.

“For me personally, this award means a lot in terms of being recognized by an organization I love and am committed to. Further, it provides critical support for an exciting project—it appears the heart is an endocrine organ, secreting substances that can regulate distant tissues and organs,” Koch said.

“We are finding that the heart can ‘talk’ to fat and alter pathways in heart muscle cells that change what is secreted and changes how fat responds to certain conditions,” Koch added. “This funding will go a long way to further this research.”

Albert, a cardiologist with expertise in preventive cardiovascular medicine, specializes in managing the most critically ill heart patients suffering a range of conditions, including coronary artery disease, heart valve disorders, and heart muscle issues.

“The American Heart Association’s Merit Award will help facilitate a targeted obesity intervention focused on social determinants of health using a pragmatic public health approach in collaboration with the YMCA-San Francisco. We are interested in answering important, clinically relevant patient-centered questions and are focused on obesity and adversity among socially disadvantaged persons,” Albert said.