The Blood, Heart, Lung, and Immunology Research Center is a joint venture of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland that is dedicated to establishing a comprehensive, collaborative program that champions transformative leadership in research, training, and education for discovery scientists. The center was officially formed in 2023 with a center kickoff in spring 2024. This new research center brings together the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) and comprehensively adds hematology and immunology discovery research with an endeavor to foster a culture of innovation that will propel advancements in understanding and treating blood, heart, lung, and immunologic diseases.
Our Mission
To provide transformative leadership in research, training, and education of discovery scientists that promotes the mechanistic understanding of, and advances treatments for blood, heart, lung and immunologic diseases.
Strategic Vision
To foster a scientific community of vibrant interdisciplinary research collaborators to facilitate innovative, cutting edge basic and translational scientific discoveries in blood, heart, lung and immune systems across disease and age spectrums.
The BHLI Research Center at CWRU and UH broadens the scope of the CWRU-UH Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) by leveraging multiple pre-existing partnerships and collaborations within and outside the institution to create an integrated, multidisciplinary program focused on providing transformative leadership in research, training, and education of discovery scientists with the goal of promoting the mechanistic understanding of, and advance treatments for, blood, heart, lung, and immunologic diseases.
The new center fosters a scientific community of vibrant, interdisciplinary research collaborators among existing faculty by facilitating innovative, cutting-edge basic and translational scientific discoveries in blood, heart, lung and immune Systems across disease and age spectrums. It identifies and recruits exceptional discovery scientists to UH and CWRU. It also encourages interdisciplinary collaborative research between departments and institutions, combines our expertise to be a catalyst for innovation in technology and scientific discovery, and provides the necessary education to recruit and train discovery multidisciplinary scientists.
Furthermore, investigators in this center work in discovery science using comprehensive mechanistic methods and technology-based development that improve science and medicine’s understanding of many disease processes and enhance the lives of patients by establishing more robust, personalized treatment approaches.
The inter-disciplinary team approach of the center leads to new collaborations between laboratory bench scientists and those scientists working in clinical research, artificial intelligence, implementation science, bioinformatics, social determinants of health, and technology development.
- Basic scientists: Basic scientists are critical to research productivity and ability to make key discoveries. However, most institutions approach the development of key discoveries with a “siloed” practice, in which the basic scientists work on their own with few translational or multidisciplinary interactions. This antiquated methodology has been replaced by collaborative team science approach. The development of a robust research center engages all points of interaction with the basic scientist to greatly enhance the quality of the science. Furthermore, a fundamental challenge for bench discoveries has been the inability to translate back to patients with robust implementation methods after rigorous clinical research techniques. Engaging scientists in implementation science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, quality improvement, technology development, social determinants of health, environmental influences on health, systems dynamics, and other related clinical fields will further translational research success and develop new models and methodologies aimed at new discoveries. This new research center integrates with existing intellectual property endeavors at UH and CWRU (UH Ventures and CWRU OTM) to assist in fast tracking IP potential. This will streamline potential high-level applications to the Harrington Discovery Institute.
- Translational research: Make key discoveries after defining mechanisms of diseases, identify novel molecular and biochemical therapeutic targets, establish phase 0, I and II drug development programs, create new intellectual property, and move this IP back to the patient via translational approaches and implement into clinical practice.
- Multidisciplinary approach: It is critical to bring together experts in translational human subjects’ research, physiology, biochemistry, engineering, implementation science, systems dynamics, artificial intelligence, developmental biology, genomics, proteomics, molecular biology, pharmacology, and biophysics.
These approaches directly align with the School of Medicine’s strategic plan and engages big pathways of igniting interdisciplinarity, integrating technology, achieving social impact, and shaping the culture. The establishment of this center enhances education and training with a transdisciplinary effort to move discoveries to implementation and societal benefit. Specifically, it positions discovery scientists at the intersection of these disciplines early in the discovery process.
The CWRU-UH BHLI Research Center develops, nurtures, and harnesses interdisciplinary teams of researchers to expand our understanding of a myriad of diseases including, but not limited to, coronary artery and peripheral vascular disease, sepsis, sickle cell disease, thalassemia, ARDS, pulmonary hypertension, heart disease, COPD, asthma, and immunotherapeutics. Key challenges and gaps in knowledge exist across disciplines in vascular, immune (neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, dendritic cells), hemostasis and coagulation, red blood cell metabolism, and many others with a need to further elucidate key molecular and signaling pathways that allow for novel mechanistic approaches to disease and treatment. This model serves as the cornerstone of this center.
The center focuses on five core, thematic areas as follows:
- Epigenetic predictors of disease
- Immune monitoring and treatment
- Brain-organ interactions
- Fibrosis, autophagy, and repair
- Vascular-endothelial biologic alterations
These areas integrate existing research and synergize with a myriad of comprehensive evaluation of diseases including CAD, sepsis, heart failure, acute malaria, and acute infectious lung and heart injury (myocarditis). Each of these disciplines cross-fertilize relevant pathophysiology, diagnostic development, and therapeutic evaluation across these themes allowing for expanded research productivity. Each thematic area applies a Multiomic approach (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics), together with theranostic development to engage interdisciplinary considerations.