Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The University of Utah's Office of Sponsored Projects received a $635,681 Project Grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837), awarded on June 20, 2026, with completion targeted for February 28, 2030. This award supports investigator-initiated research examining the pyruvate-lactate metabolic axis in heart failure and cardiac recovery. The research project will quantify metabolic alterations in human heart failure and myocardial recovery, determine the essentiality of the pyruvate-lactate metabolic axis for heart failure pathology and recovery, and define cell-autonomous mechanisms regulating this metabolic pathway using state-of-the-art stable isotope-labeled glucose and lactate tracing methodologies on human myocardial tissue.

The research deliverables will produce fundamental scientific understanding of cardiac metabolism dysregulation in heart failure, identification of molecular pathways involved in myocardial recovery, and potential novel druggable targets for future pharmacological interventions. By leveraging unique access to human heart failure tissue samples from patients administered labeled metabolic tracers, this project aims to advance knowledge of the metabolic mechanisms underlying heart failure—a leading worldwide cause of mortality—and expedite translational applications that could inform therapeutic development strategies targeting metabolic dysfunction in cardiac disease.