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July 20, 2007|Volume 35, Number 31|Six-Week Issue


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Yale scientists part of 'dream team'
investigating hypertension

Leading researchers from Switzerland, France, Mexico and the Yale School of Medicine are pooling efforts under a five-year, $6 million grant from the Leducq Foundation to pinpoint the kidney's role in high blood pressure.

Hypertension affects more than one billion people worldwide and is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, myocardial infarction, sudden death and kidney disease. The exact causes remain unknown.

Titled "Transatlantic Network on Hypertension-Renal Salt Handling in the Control of Blood Pressure," the collaborative effort will seek to understand how the underlying mechanisms resulting in elevated blood pressure depend upon the role of the kidney in managing the level of salt in the body.

Leading the team at Yale are Dr. Steven Hebert, professor and chair of cellular and molecular physiology and the American coordinator of the project, and Dr. Richard Lifton, professor and chair of genetics.

"Breakthroughs in understanding and treating this complex and often devastating disease will come from collaborations among top scientists from around the world," Hebert says. "The grant from the Leducq Foundation unites leaders in salt metabolism and hypertension from Europe and North America to understand the role of deranged salt handling by the kidney in causing and maintaining high blood pressure."

"The Leducq program," Lifton adds, "uniquely allows us to bring together a 'dream team' of investigators around the world with diverse expertise in physiology, genetics and clinical investigation to combine forces to tackle this important medical problem."

The European coordinator of the project is Professor Bernard Rossier of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, who will direct pharmacology and toxicology researchers at Lausanne and Lausanne University Hospital. Also part of the network are researchers from the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, under the direction of Professor Gerardo Gamba, and a team led by Dr. Xavier Jeunemaître of Hospital Georges Pompidou and the Collège de France in Paris.

The transatlantic team will study the metabolism of sodium, potassium and calcium and their influence on blood pressure. Its members will focus on the ion channels expressed in the kidney and on genetic factors that lead to a sensitivity or resistance to salt-related hypertension. The goal is to identify new therapeutic targets for hypertension. In addition, the network will integrate its expertise in areas of population genetics and animal models of hypertension, and combine approaches from molecular biology, proteomics and physiology.

The Leducq Foundation funding will enable the group to develop a network of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers within the participating institutions; develop a platform of exchange via the Internet for training, videoconferencing, real-time laboratory discussions and other exchanges; and develop a centralized database that will allow easy access to the tools, instruments, materials and other resources that the various teams will share.

Jean and Sylviane Leducq established the Leducq Foundation in 1996 to support cardiovascular disease research. One of the foundation's goals is to promote collaboration between researchers in North America and Europe. Toward this end, it began in 2004 to accept applications for its Transatlantic Networks of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research Program.


T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Gift of $10 million to support work of China Law Center

Studies cast new light on problems, treatment of childhood obesity

Students' summer projects designed to serve city's needs

Tennis center being transformed into state-of-the-art facility

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE NEWS

Paul Genecin reappointed as director of YUHS

Postdoc honored with fellowship for research on drug delivery

Architecture School to begin new year in temporary home with talk, exhibit

Exhibit showcases diverse incarnations of Kipling's books

Manuscripts provide window into pre-20th-century Islamic life, learning

Alumni earn Yale Medals for service to their alma mater

Newly renovated Cross Campus Library to open in the fall

Exhibit highlights career of artist who 'probed the nation's ills'

Pilot Pen tournament to bring top-ranked players to Elm City

Ira Millstein is again named 'Corporate Lawyer of the Year'

MacMillan Center awards book prize to French professor Maurice Samuel

In Memoriam: Peter H. Marris

Memorial service for Helen Simpson Culler

Documentary on the creation of Peabody Museum's Torosaurus . . .

Yale Books in Brief

Campus Notes


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