Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) awarded The Leland Stanford Junior University a Project Grant of $769,846 under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837) for the period July 1, 2026 through March 31, 2030. This award supports the development and application of an integrative genomics toolkit designed to characterize and engineer regulatory DNA elements—including enhancers and promoters—to achieve precise, quantitative control of gene expression. The toolkit comprises computational tools to optimize DNA sequences for desired expression outcomes and experimental tools to validate sequence modifications at high throughput using CRISPR prime editing and targeted insertion of candidate regulatory elements.

The funded research will deliver three primary outputs: (1) mechanistic characterization of transcription factor binding site modifications in gene promoters to enable tunable gene expression; (2) systematic mapping of enhancer and silencer libraries inserted at defined distances from target promoters; and (3) single-cell readout approaches to measure cell-type specificity of regulatory edits in cardiac organoid models. Stanford will apply these methods to study four disease-relevant genes where genome editing therapies could provide therapeutic benefit, thereby advancing fundamental understanding of gene regulation and establishing a validated platform for rational design of therapeutic regulatory DNA rewrites.