Funding: CANet funds arrhythmia research projects across Canada
The Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet), and its partners announced funding of 10 research grants across the country totaling over $4.4 million with an additional $10 million in matching funds.
“With firm commitments from Canadian partners, our inclusion of patients throughout our research process, and our mandate to remain solutions-driven, our latest round of research proposals have been funded. We look forward to the outcomes and impacts of this critical research that will improve patient care,” said Dr. Anthony Tang, CEO and Scientific Director of CANet, housed at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry at Western University. “We are grateful to our partners for providing the matching funds to help advance this important research.”
Of the funded projects, two were from Schulich Medicine & Dentistry. Congratulations to Maria Drangova, PhD, and Dr. Jaimie Manlucu.
Drangova, professor in the department of medical biophysics and a scientist at Robarts Research Institute received a commercialization grant from CANet to further develop a catheter contact-force controller for cardiac ablation therapy. Currently, the motion of the heart as it beats and the patient breathes can affect the contact the catheter makes with the heart during the therapy delivery. This can result in ineffective lesions – nearly half the time patients return for a second “re-do” procedure. This device aims to adjust the position of the catheter tip to control that contact force.
Dr. Manlucu, assistant professor in the department of Medicine will be using the funds to determine how to better treat patients using Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT), by changing the placement of the pacemaker wire. The goal is to see whether this new way of placing the CRT wires will help heart function improve in patients with less severe electrical problems.
With this funding cycle, CANet continues to grow in scale and scope. The introduction of a dedicated Social Sciences competition advances CANet’s mandate to integrate the work of the social sciences and humanities better. CANet’s Commercialization Grant has further leveraged the investments of the NCE program surpassing CANet’s goal of securing an additional $40M in partner research contributions.
Arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation, syncope, and other common heart rhythm disturbances affect millions of Canadians resulting in unexpected early deaths and reduced quality of life. Arrhythmias are projected to be the leading cause of death in Canada by 2020.
Congratulations to all the funded researchers.
