The Vascular Biology Training program at the University of Virginia promotes the academic development of Clinician- Investigators with focused research efforts in Vascular Disease. Vascular Disease continues to be the leading cause of death in our country and training future Clinician-Investigators that will be the leaders in bringing major basic science advances into the clinical arena is of utmost importance. This interdisciplinary postdoctoral research training grant has successfully brought together Clinician-Investigators from the clinical departments with PhD Investigators from the basic science departments to provide an outstanding environment in which to train in Vascular Biology research. This competitive renewal application seeks to continue this strong tradition of excellence. The major participating departments include Internal Medicine (Cardiovascular, Endocrine and Nephrology divisions), Pediatrics (Nephrology and Cardiology divisions), Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics, Pharmacology, and Biomedical Engineering. The main research training is supervised bench research but there are also numerous seminars, journal clubs, and courses to provide didactic education as well. Basic statistics, data management and research ethics are required courses for all trainees. Additional course work is encouraged and an accelerated PhD program for MDs is available through the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. Most of the training projects involve cellular and molecular biology. More recently, many projects have also incorporated newer imaging technologies {MRI and microbubbles) with cellular biology to result in training in cutting edge areas of cardiovascular research. There are several strong research areas that most of our trainees enter: the biology of vascular lesion formation;the reninangiotensin aldosterone system;and cardiovascular imaging. Major strengths of this program are the highly qualified MD trainees that we are able to recruit, our outstanding mentors, our outstanding Vascular Biology courses, seminars and journal clubs. During the last 5 year funding period, 29% of our trainees were from URM. In this submission, we have more clearly outlined out detailed plan for continuing this successful tradition.
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