BHF CRE flagship projects

HARVEST: Harnessing Asian population data to define cardiometabolic resilience, from metabolic dysfunction to cardiovascular disease and prevention

Finding an integrated translational pathway linking population discovery, mechanistic biology and real-world implementation. Genetics, multi-omics, and population data from South Asian, Singaporean, and Chinese cohorts will identify phenotypes, genes and networks of molecular biomarkers associated with cardiometabolic resilience and susceptibility. Human co-culture and organoid platforms of adipose, liver, vessel and heart, with lipidomic and mediator profiling, will define how metabolic stress injures the cardiovascular system across sexes and life stages. Scalable electronic health record (EHR)-based approaches will identify individuals at greatest cardiometabolic risk, enable risk-based prioritisation of NHS Health Checks, and evaluate the potential of emerging biomarkers to improve risk prediction and precision prevention.
The programme expects to deliver prioritised targets, a shared human organoid platform and a validated EHR prevention framework, together with Cambridge, Singapore and China partnerships.

Characterisation of the genetic basis of endothelial cell transcriptional and functional variation

Research groups from University of Leicester, University of Exeter, Cambridge University and Wellcome Sanger Institute have examined the role of endothelial cells in cardiovascular diseases. We have generated genotype, RNA-Seq, ATAC-Seq, CHIP-Seq and ECIS data on over 100 endothelial cell lines. These data have been processed and utilized in several analyses including QTL, co-localisation, eCAVIAR, and Summary-data based Mendelian Randomization (SMR).