Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded a Project Grant totaling $170,432 to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for research on Bayesian modeling of multivariate lifetime disease trajectories in cardiovascular disease. The award period extends from May 1, 2026 through April 30, 2031. Under this Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837), the research will develop and validate novel Bayesian hierarchical models to integrate time-varying genetic and clinical factors across over 300 diagnostic phenotypes, with dual objectives of identifying latent disease signatures for genomic discovery and producing calibrated estimates for individualized patient prediction.

The project will deliver three primary research products: (1) a multivariate Bayesian model capturing disease signatures and progression patterns in cardiovascular disease populations; (2) a novel genetic warping framework to investigate how genetic factors influence the timing of disease trajectory progression; and (3) analysis of treatment response variability across patient subgroups to optimize therapeutic strategies. Building on preliminary work identifying 20 unique disease signatures through survival-based Bayesian inference, this research will leverage large-scale datasets to advance understanding of how genetic effects vary across phenotypes and life stages, ultimately enabling both genomic discovery and individualized clinical prediction.