04 Apr 08

The grant will help to identify people who are at risk of heart and circulatory diseases

Oxford research into heart disease, the UK’s biggest killer, will receive a large cash boost from the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which is establishing a BHF Centre of Research Excellence at Oxford University with £8.4m over six years.

The initiative aims to forge pioneering research partnerships between bioscientists and computer scientists, as well as to attract and train the best young scientists in finding ways to prevent, diagnose and treat heart and circulatory disease.

Work at Oxford funded by the award will be a mixture of basic and applied research that will span a range of disciplines, from molecular biology to huge population studies. Researchers in the Centre will study the frequency of heart disease in populations and conduct clinical trials to find ways of reducing its burden. The Centre will also identify people who are at risk of heart and circulatory diseases, and decipher how and why they develop. The ultimate goals are to prevent disease and to find targets for new treatments or cures.

Professor Hugh Watkins, Head of Oxford’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, will be the Centre Director. ‘We’re all very excited to have been designated a BHF Centre of Research Excellence, especially because this brings flexible funding that’s not pre-committed,’ he says. ‘With this we can be more innovative and better able to compete in a fast moving field. I also think the award reflects well on Oxford’s cardiovascular researchers and this will help us to attract further talent to the field and to Oxford.'

Cardiovascular research in Oxford draws on around 20 independent, but interactive, research groups from seven departments, and focuses on translational research: taking findings from fundamental science such as molecular biology through to treatments for patients.

Four BHF Centres of Research Excellence will be established nationally, each of which applied for the funding in a competitive process. The other three are at Imperial College London, King’s College London and the University of Edinburgh.

‘Many of the advances in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease available today are the result of past research undertaken in the UK,’ says Professor Peter Weissberg, Medical Director at the BHF.

‘The BHF Centres of Research Excellence will ensure that the UK retains its world-leading edge and that UK patients are the first to benefit. This investment will create a new generation of world-class researchers to lead the fight against heart disease over the coming decades.’