110 Irving Street
Washington, DC 20010

Mission:

The Cardiovascular Research Institute (CRI) is the largest division of the MedStar Research Institute and focuses most of its translational and clinical research efforts at the Washington Hospital Center. Working at the Hospital Center are some of the world’s most experienced interventional cardiologists and cardiac surgeons, resulting in the Hospital Center being home to one of the nation’s most renowned cardiac programs. Over 12,000 diagnostic cardiac catheterizations are performed at Washington Hospital Center each year, with about 5,000 angioplasty procedures and over 2,500 open-heart surgeries. The basic and translational laboratories of CRI are located in the George Hyman Memorial Research Building, which shares with its three sister medical facilities a 47-acre campus. The angiogenesis research group consists of scientists engaged in molecular and cellular translational studies, animal physiologists, interventional cardiologists, and research coordinators.

Director:

Stephen Epstein, MD

Background of Director:

Dr. Stephen E. Epstein, the Executive Director of CRI and head of Vascular Biology Research, has pioneered the development and testing of angiogenesis strategies. While Chief of the Cardiology Branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, NIH, he and his colleagues published the first therapeutic angiogenesis paper demonstrating proof of concept--they showed that it was possible, in a dog model of coronary occlusion, to increase blood flow to the ischemic myocardium by enhancing the functional capacity of collateral vessels.

Major Accomplishemnts:

After moving to the Washington Hospital Center, Dr. Epstein and his associates made CRI the focus of their angiogenesis efforts. Thus, over the past 7 years CRI has been involved in multiple studies relating to identifying new treatment strategies for growing collateral vessels. The lab demonstrated in the first gene expression profiling study that collaterogenesis is extremely complex, regulated by multiple growth-factors interacting in concert and in sequence. CRI investigators therefore refocused their efforts from protein and gene therapy, and launched a series of investigations on the potential of cell therapy to enhance angiogenesis.

They showed that progenitor cells were virtual cytokine factories and therefore proposed, for the first time, that the administration of cells obtained from the patient’s own bone marrow might provide the necessary multiple factors to optimally grow collaterals. Proof-of-concept was first demonstrated in two different animal models and then, the first bone marrow-derived cell therapy study was performed in patients with stable angina.

Current Projects:

CRI’s angiogenesis efforts are dedicated to a) identifying through translational studies the mechanisms by which cell therapy may enhance collaterogenesis, b) identifying the most effective cell-based strategies to grow collaterals, and c) participating in clinical trials. These activities are carried out in several collaborating laboratories:

• The Vascular Biology Lab. This lab is CRI’s translational research laboratory.

Lead Researchers: Stephen E. Epstein, M.D. and Mary Susan Burnett, PhD. Key Research Collaborators: Anton Wellstein and Zofia Zukowska, M.D., Ph.D. [Georgetown University]

• Pre-Clinical Research Lab. As part of the translational research program, CRI has a large Preclinical Animal Research GLP Facility.

Lead Researchers: Ron Waksman, MD. Key Research Staff: David Hellinga, MS, Richard Baffour, PhD, Rajbabu Pakala, PhD

• Clinical Research. CRI has well over 100 ongoing clinical trials—either as part of multicenter trials or investigator-initiated trials. Among these trials are several related to the effects of stem cell therapy on collaterogenesis and on myocardial failure.

Lead Researchers: Ron Waksman, M.D., Les Miller, M.D., Gus Pichard, M.D., Lowell Satler, M.D., Kenneth Kent, M.D., Joe Lindsay, M.D., William Suddath, M.D. Key Research Staff: Petros Okubagzi, Trish Landry, Rebecca Torguson, Kimberly Smith.

Website:

http://www.medstarresearch.org/body.cfm?id=22