De Windt and Heymans receive CVON research grant for ARENA project

Just before end 2011 Professor Leon de Windt and Professor Stephane Heymans (both Dept. of Cardiology) received a confirmation of their successful CVON (Cardiovasculair Onderzoek Nederland) grant application on the ARENA study.

CVON, a mutual initiative of the NHS, KNAW, ZonMW and NFU, aims to improve the national and international position of cardiovascular research in the Netherlands, by supporting large and strong research themes. The ARENA project is supported with 5 M€ in 5 years.

Participating centers
The ARENA project, acronym of Approaching Heart Failure By Translational Research of RNA Mechanisms, is a cooperation between principal investigators of five University Medical Centers in the Netherlands. The consortium consists of researchers at AMC (PI Prof. Yigal Pinto), UM/MUMC+ (PI's Prof. Stephane Heymans and Leon de Windt), UMCG (PI Prof. Voors), VUMC (PI Prof. Paulus and Dr Van de Velden), Erasmus MC (Prof Duncker). Professor Pinto and Professor De Windt will be the research coordinators of the consortium.

Aim of the project
Recent advances in the field of microRNAs provide novel possibilities that are on the brink of clinical application. The surprising stability of circualting microRNAs has opened the possibility to develop next generation biomarkers. Inhibition of selected microRNAs is powerful and holds great promise to become the next generation therapeutics. Since microRNAs and their targets are genomically encoded, genetic principles apply and create 'microRNA genetics' as a source of individual variation. ARENA aims to mine the wealth of these ncRNA mechanisms to enable the development of next generation RNA based diagnostics and therapeutics. Each work package is based on recently generated data within the consortium to provide necessary prove of concept. ARENA is to be expected to address the clinical added value of newly identified RNA based mechanisms and to use the unique models combined in ARENA to mine the wealth of ncRNAs in Heart Failure.

More information
For more information, please visit the CVON website (only in Dutch) or contact the PI's involved in the project; Professor Leon de Windt and Professor Stephane Heymans.