Big grant to aid UNR research into heart disease

RENO, Nev. - The National Institutes of Health awarded the University of Nevada School of Medicine a $9.2 million grant - one of the school's largest ever - for a project researchers say may save heart patients' lives.

The research aimed at developing new drugs to fight heart disease stems from Dr. Joseph Hume's 1989 discovery of protein in the human heart that conducts negatively charged electricity.

''We have a tremendous opportunity to develop new, state-of-the-art medical technologies and learn more about cardiovascular disease,'' Hume said Tuesday.

The five-year federal grant will pay for the creation of a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence, or COBRE, at the UNR campus. It's the second largest in school history, behind the 10-year $9.4 million Women's Health Initiative in 1993.

''Support from the National Institutes of Health for the establishment of the COBRE center at the University of Nevada is a clear recognition of the recent growth in stature and national competitiveness of Nevada as a biomedical research enterprise,'' UNR President Joe Crowley said Tuesday.

It's been known for some time that proteins in cell membranes transport ions across the heart. That's the electric current flow that allows electrocardiograms to monitor hearts with a beep and an electronic spike to signal heart beats.

Many of the medicines used to treat abnormal heart rhythm or arrhythmia target this positive electric flow.

In 1989, Hume of the medical school's department of Physiology and Cell Biology found a new class of proteins that carry negatively charged ions like chloride.

Just like current medicines treat the positive ion flow, there could be new medicines to treat the negative ion flow.

''Electrical activity of the heart is essential for coordinating its mechanical efficiency to pump blood,'' said Hume, program director of the study.

''What this program allows now is really to allow us to expand this investigation,'' Hume said.

Among the issues that will be studied in the four-year program are investigating the gene that makes the protein that enable the chloride channels and looking at people natural born with defects in these genes and how that might tie into heart disease.

''During a heart attack, part of the heart muscle dies and this alters the electrical activity it generates,'' Hume said, possibly leading to the development of a life-threatening irregular heartbeat.

''This causes a reduction in cardiac output and, if it is severe enough, it can lead to brain death,'' he said.

Burton Horowitz, the project's co-principal investigator, said the research will ''help determine the environmental and genetic causes of cardiac dysfunction.

''The more we learn about chloride channels, the easier it will be to design drugs that block or enhance this function,'' he said.

Dr. Robert Miller, dean of the School of Medicine, said the grant was a great tribute to the work of Hume and Horowitz.

''They have developed the reputation and skills to earn a grant such as this,'' he said.