IPRD-supported FSU Graduate Student Emily Shiel Awarded Prestigious AHA Predoctoral Fellowship for Innovative Research in Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy
We are proud to announce that Emily Shiel, an IPRD-supported doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, has been awarded an American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship Award. This award is a highly prestigious funding mechanism that supports predoctoral and clinical health degree students conducting innovative research in the fields of heart disease and stroke.
Under the guidance of her AHA sponsor, Dr. Stephen Chelko, and co-sponsoring team (Drs. Jose Pinto and Yi Ren), Emily will receive two years of funding for her research project titled “Targeting Neutrophil-Mediated Pathways: A New Frontier in Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy Treatment.”
Commenting on her achievement, Emily said, “Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy (ACM) is genetic heart disease and a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the young. Hearts from these patients become inflamed, causing cell death, and scar tissue. This weakens the heart from pumping properly and may cause abnormal heartbeats. Studies show these inflamed hearts may be the result of two possibilities. Heart cells that make inflammatory proteins and/or white blood cells that travel to the heart. I aim to determine if these inflamed hearts are due to one or the other. But I believe it is most likely a combination of both. Specifically, I am investigating a white blood cell, called neutrophils, the first immune cell to arrive at the scene of an injury. Usually, these cells help repair tissue and then go away, but in ACM, they linger and keep causing trouble. For my research I plan to delete a gene and block one protein that leads to heart inflammation using an animal model of ACM. This directly supports the mission of the AHA by uncovering potential targets to prevent heart inflammation in ACM and other heart diseases.”
Emily's research directly aligns with the AHA's mission to be a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives, and we congratulate her on this significant achievement.
IPRD congratulates Emily and her mentor Dr. Stephen Chelko. We are proud that IPRD funding helped generate the preliminary data that were the basis of Emily’s successful AHA application.
Rare Disease Research Program: Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy
