Research Priorities

The Compelling Questions (CQs) and Critical Challenges (CCs) submitted during the Visioning process were refined to yield a set of 132 Research Priorities that will guide the NHLBI for the next decade. NHLBI-solicited activities that result from the Research Priorities will advance our progress in achieving the eight Objectives and will have a profound effect on the health and well-being of people across this country and around the globe.

Investigator-initiated discovery science has been and will remain the bedrock of the NHLBI mission, and individual researchers will always be encouraged to pursue their ideas through investigator-initiated projects. However, NHLBI leadership can catalyze extramural investigations that take advantage of new scientific opportunities and close gaps in knowledge. One means by which this occurs is through Institute-solicited research initiatives supported through new Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). The Research Priorities identify important opportunities in science that will shape the development of future FOAs and other NHLBI-solicited activities.

Critical Challenge

A better understanding of the factors governing the safety and efficacy of therapeutic hemoglobin-based extracellular oxygen carriers (HBOCs) and improved animal models for HBOC studies are needed. (5.CC.01)

Critical Challenge

A new generation of ventricular assist devices is needed to minimize platelet activation, thrombogenesis, and bleeding; to incorporate better percutaneous and transcutaneous systems; and to improve battery and charging-mechanism designs. (5.CC.11)

Critical Challenge

A variety of "smart" devices are needed that both monitor physiology and assist, adjust, or intervene automatically to treat acute complications of cardiovascular disease. (5.CC.10)

Critical Challenge

Advancements are needed in the organization, infrastructure, integration, and availability of "omics" data, including genetic, epigenetic, transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic, phenotypic, and ontologic information. (7.CC.04)

Critical Challenge

Advances in methods of and models for assessing and characterizing exposures (e.g., diet, smoking, other environmental and social exposures) are needed to understand differences in health among populations. (3.CC.04)

Critical Challenge

Advances in methods of and models for assessing and characterizing exposures (e.g., environmental, dietary, social) are needed to improve research on normal biologic function and resilience. (1.CC.04)

Critical Challenge

An understanding of the immune system from a systems biology perspective is needed to design more efficacious treatment strategies for chronic inflammatory and autoimmune HLBS diseases. (5.CC.02)

Critical Challenge

Better apheresis-based sickle cell disease treatments are needed to provide the benefits of blood transfusion without the risks and complications that are associated with both simple and exchange transfusions. (5.CC.09)

Critical Challenge

Better preparation of scientists for transitions between career stages (e.g., the graduate/medical education stage, the postdoctoral/fellowship period, the junior investigator stage) is needed. (8.CC.05)

Critical Challenge

Bold new bioinformatic and biostatistical methods and approaches are needed to improve the analysis of big data. (7.CC.05)

Critical Challenge

Clinical evaluation tools are needed to differentiate patients with atherosclerotic heart disease who will progress to myocardial infarction or with sudden cardiac death from those with stable disease. (4.CC.03)

Critical Challenge

Clinical evaluation tools, such as biomarkers of physiologic age and a clinical score for frailty, are needed for assessing cardiopulmonary perioperative risk and predicting postoperative recovery in the elderly. (5.CC.08)

Critical Challenge

Collection and analysis of education and employment data from HLBS scientists over the course of their careers is needed to define metrics and predictors of success at both individual and training-program levels. (8.CC.08)

Critical Challenge

Creative and innovative methods to integrate and analyze data from population and cohort research are needed to generate hypotheses and to expedite bedside-to-basic "reverse translation." (7.CC.06)

Critical Challenge

Creative approaches are needed to effectively transcend silos (e.g., perinatal, pediatric, and adult divides in clinical and translational research). (6.CC.09)

Critical Challenge

Creative approaches to clinical trials in rare HLBS diseases are needed to successfully test strategies that will expand preventive and therapeutic options. (6.CC.07)

Critical Challenge

Creative use of the array of newly available data sources is needed in clinical trial design and conduct in order to improve efficiency, cost effectiveness, and generalizability. (6.CC.06)

Critical Challenge

Curricula and resources for education of health care workers in evidence-based care are needed. (8.CC.07)

Critical Challenge

Development and application of comprehensive single-cell biology analytics are needed to facilitate an integrated understanding of cellular diversity, cell-cell interactions, and cellular phenomena in HLBS health and disease risk. (1.CC.03)

Critical Challenge

Development of safe, well-functioning designer platelets and red blood cells from stem or progenitor cells, as well as the large-scale production of these products, is needed for therapeutic and diagnostic uses. (5.CC.06)

Critical Challenge

Dietary assessment methodologies that combine objective measures and biomarkers of dietary intake are needed to identify dietary patterns and food constituents that contribute to healthy weight maintenance and to inform intervention strategies to lower cardiometabolic risks. (1.CC.06)

Compelling Question

Do interventions to improve ventilation during sleep decrease morbidity and mortality in individuals with either heart failure (or other diseases associated with chronic hypoxemia) and sleep-disordered breathing? (5.CQ.21)

Compelling Question

Do the factors that render individuals or populations subjected to the same exposures (e.g., diet, smoking, other environmental and social exposures) resilient or susceptible to disease differ across the lifespan and by sex/gender? (3.CQ.04)

Compelling Question

Does circadian regulation modify the effects of environmental exposures (e.g., cigarette smoke, particulates, pathogens, temperature, humidity) on mechanisms of HLBS function? (1.CQ.09)

Critical Challenge

Expanded research on bleeding risk in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation is needed to develop more accurate risk stratification that would enhance anticoagulation decision-making for the elderly population and reduce stroke incidence. (5.CC.07)

Critical Challenge

Expanded resources for identifying therapeutic targets and agents, establishing proof of concept, and developing data for investigational new drug applications are needed to enable the early translation of research findings to clinical applications. (6.CC.05)

Critical Challenge

Gaining fundamental knowledge of the glycome, its regulation, and its function in HLBS systems is needed to improve understanding of post-translational modifications of proteins. (1.CC.05)

Compelling Question

How are normal cell functions regulated by complex gene networks and cell-to-cell interactions? (1.CQ.01)

Compelling Question

How can a better understanding of the molecular and physiological mechanisms of hypothermia help differentiate beneficial hypothermia from uncontrolled shock-induced hypothermia? (2.CQ.13)

Compelling Question

How can alterations of stem cell cycles and other therapies, as well as endogenous mechanisms, be harnessed to promote repair and regeneration of the heart, lung, and blood systems? (5.CQ.22)

Research Priorities

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