Kenneth E. Remy, MD, MHSc, MSCI, FCCM, the Ellery Sedgwick Jr. Chair and Distinguished Scientist in Cardiovascular Research is the inaugural director of the center:
“We are committed on efforts will lead 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 to develop more comprehensive evaluation of diseases that fit within the BHLI scope including in epigenetic predictors of disease, immune monitoring and treatment, brain-organ interactions, fibrosis, autophagy, and repair, and vascular-endothelial biologic alterations in disease. These comprehensive mechanistic methods and technology based development will improve the lives of patients by establishing a more robust personalized medicine approach. We look forward to partnering with the local and greater scientific community to achieve these endeavors.”
To achieve its vision of advancing the science of health, the Case Western University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Health System (UH) have committed institutional investments to support the development of Centers of Excellence (COE) as a mechanism to align research activities with clinical excellence, promote team science, and impact standard of care for our community and world.
“Over the past 18 months, the leadership of the University Hospitals Research Division (UHRD) under the leadership of Dr. Daniel Simon and Case Western Reserve Joint Strategic Leadership Council (JSLC) under the leadership of Dr. Robert Salata have evaluated the current scope of discovery science in the fields of immunology, cardiovascular, pulmonary, and hematology research. In conjunction with CWRU School of Medicine, we are pleased to announce the establishment of the first Center for Blood, Heart, Lung, and Immunology Research (BHLI).”
The Blood, Heart, Lung, and Immunology Research Center (BHLI-RC)
The BHLI-RC will build upon the work of the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) started by Drs. Mukesh Jain and Daniel Simon and recently led by Dr. Sanjay Rajagopalan, chief, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine at University Hospitals. The new center will broaden the scope of the CVRI and leverage multiple pre-existing partnerships and collaborations within and outside of the institution to create an integrated, multidisciplinary program focused on providing 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. The center will endeavor 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 while recruitment exception discovery scientists into the Cleveland region.