Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded a Project Grant totaling $124,688 to The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York (Health Sciences Division) under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837), with an award date of April 1, 2026 and completion date of March 31, 2028. This K99/R00 grant supports research aimed at decoding the gene regulatory networks governing mammalian cardiac maturation through integration of single-cell multiomics technologies and advanced computational methods. The research will characterize epigenomic changes in the mouse heart during postnatal development, construct cell-type-resolved gene regulatory networks using bioinformatic approaches coupled with deep learning, and establish cell culture and mouse models with CRISPR-mediated dual-fluorescent reporters to track cardiomyocyte maturation.

The deliverables encompass both basic science outputs and applied therapeutic development. During the K99 phase, the award supports the generation of single-cell multiomic data characterizing cardiac development and the construction of regulatory network models. During the subsequent R00 phase, the project will experimentally validate key regulatory elements and novel transcriptional regulators through functional genomic approaches, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the maturation of in vitro-derived cardiomyocytes to improve their therapeutic potential for cardiac regenerative medicine and disease modeling applications.