PHILADELPHIA — Rajan Jain, MD, cardiovascular fellow, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, has been honored with an American Medical Association (AMA) 2012 Seed Grant Research Program award for his promising research into congenital heart disease.
"I'm very excited to have received this grant," said Dr. Jain. "Congenital heart disease is among the most prevalent congenital abnormalities, but surprisingly, we know very little about how the various abnormalities occur. We hope to continue to understand the fundamentals of cardiac development and to eventually provide novel avenues of diagnostics and therapeutics for patients with congenital heart disease."
Dr. Jain, working under the guidance Jonathan A. Epstein, MD, scientific director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute and chair, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, William Wikoff Smith Professor of Cardiovascular Research, Perelman School of Medicine, is interested specifically in how the aortic valve and aorta are formed, and how this process goes wrong in patients with congenital heart disease.
Dr. Jain is one of 43 junior investigators nationwide awarded a grant by this initiative for basic science or clinical research projects in the areas of cardiovascular/pulmonary diseases, HIV/AIDS, neoplastic diseases and pancreatic cancer.
The AMA's grant research program supports grant-writing and research skills in young researchers. Since its creation in 2000, the program has encouraged these medical school students, residents, and fellows to pursue research careers by funding new projects, instead of funding current research by experienced principal investigators.
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