Dr. Guobao Chen, PhD, MF Fellowship Research Grant Awardee has published research findings for which he was awarded our Research Grant in 2016 for his work in “The Role of PDGFRa+ Cardiac Fibroblast in Myocarditis.”
His work was conducted in the research lab of Dr. Daniela Cihakova, MD, PhD, at John’s Hopkins University, who actually was our first Fellowship Grant recipient in 2006! The results that he was able to achieve with the help of the Myocarditis Foundation were recently published in the September Issue of the European Journal of Immunology. His paper was also chosen as the cover for that issue with the heat map showing the GM-CSF expression in human PDGFRa+ cardiac fibroblasts.
In Dr. Chen’s report, he noted that “Heart Failure is a global public health issue with high morbidity and mortality rates, affecting about 26 million people worldwide. The heart failure survival rate is 50% after 5 years and only 10% after 10 years in the USA. In contrast to other common cardiovascular diseases, heart failure prognoses have shown only modest improvement. The pathophysiology of heart failure is complex and could be triggered by direct injury to the myocardium, such as coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction (heart attack), or an inflammatory disease state such as myocarditis that leads to inflammatory dilated cardiomyopathy.
His research was able to identify a specific cardiac fibroblast subset that drives the development of heart failure of potent producers of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines.
The Myocarditis Foundation would like to express their deepest thanks to Dr. Chen for his interest and myocarditis research that will one day allow us to put an end to this disease!
Congratulations Dr. Chen!
