Paul Alongi
The millions of patients who suffer from a condition that
contributes to heart failure could receive personalized risk
assessments and treatments with the help of new research led
by Dr. Will Richardson of Clemson University. Richardson, an
assistant professor of bioengineering, is receiving an R01 grant
of $1.9 million from the National Institutes of Health for five
years of research focused on cardiac fibrosis. The condition
occurs when material builds up in heart walls, hampering its
ability to pump blood.
When cardiac fibrosis progresses to heart failure, it can prove
deadly. As many as 60 percent of patients die within five years
of developing heart failure, which afflicts 6.5 million Americans,
Richardson said. No drugs have been approved to treat cardiac
fibrosis specifically, and doctors are often left with trial-and-error
experimentation when treating patients who have it, he said.
For Richardson, the solution could start with math. His team has
taken what scientists already know about how molecules interact
in the body, and turned that information into mathematical
equations. Richardson envisions a day when measurements from
a patient’s blood or tissue sample would be plugged into those
equations.
“We want to have this computational tool where the clinician can
come and say ‘this is your risk, and we’ve simulated these 10
or 100 or 1,000 different drug combinations and regimens,’”
he said. “We’re never going to do trial and error for those many
combinations, but a computer model can crank all those options
overnight. “The next day the cardiologist would say, ‘This is the
optimized drug regimen or therapy for your particular levels.’”
The research is in its early stages, and it would take more than
a decade of experimentation for any new tool to hit the market,
Richardson said.
The central question that Richardson plans to address in his
project is whether the mathematical model he has in place
behaves as predicted and, if not, what ought to be changed. He
plans to test the model with data gathered from heart failure
patients at the Medical University of South Carolina. “We can
test what the model predicts because we already know in those
patients whether or not they got better or worse, or what their
prognosis was,” Richardson said. “We can test that against the
model predictions to say, ‘Is our model making good predictions
or bad predictions?’ And if it’s making bad predictions, what part
of the model is responsible for those bad decisions so we can
come back and tweak that part of the model and improve it?”
Funding for the research comes through the National Institutes
of Health’s R01 program. Martine LaBerge, chair of Clemson’s
Department of Bioengineering, said the program is nationally
competitive. “Dr. Richardson is highly deserving of this grant,”
she said. “He has assembled an excellent, multidisciplinary
team and brings to the project his expertise in cell stretching
and computational modeling. He is well positioned for success.”
Richardson is principal investigator on the grant. Co-investigators
from Clemson are Zhi Gao, Joseph Bible and Taufiquar Khan. Coinvestigators
from MUSC are Michael Zile, Amy Bradshaw and
Catalin Baicu.
Anand Gramopadhye, dean of the College of Engineering,
Computing and Applied Sciences, said Richardson and his
team are in a position to advance health innovation, one of six
innovation clusters identified in the ClemsonForward plan. “I
congratulate Dr. Richardson on his grant,” Gramopadhye said.
“The amount of the award and the fact that it comes from the
R01 program is a testament to its importance and the high value
that his peers see in it.”
