Biomedical Research

Expansion Award Announcements

June 8, 2023

We are proud to present our 2023 Expansion Award Program awardees!

This year, proposals from 12 research teams across the globe have been selected, for a total investment of ~$600K. Our Expansion Awards provide ‘piggyback’ funding for teams to add new directions or approaches to their currently funded work, supporting researchers by expanding the scope of existing projects, supporting new directions, spurring new ideas, and increasing the scientific interest and impact of studies in the single ventricle field. These awards enable investigators in the field to initiate their “future directions” now.

The Expansion Awards give our research teams the ability to move hypotheses forward quickly – exploring new ideas and paving the way for future discovery.  And, while the term of these awards is only 12 months, these investments will continue to offer significant returns in the long term. The impact of their respective findings, tested hypotheses, and next-generation technologies will outlive any single project and drive future discovery years beyond the limits of our initial support.

This year’s selection showcases a broad spectrum of science, across disciplines and Research Roadmap areas. These awardees have the potential to significantly impact the future of the single ventricle field with their outside-of-the box thinking: from novel implantable Fontan Assist Devices, to placental stem cell therapies, and large animal model development to high-throughput testing platforms, this cohort demonstrates the myriad of ways in which Expansion Awards can impact the trajectory of science.

Expansion Award Recipients

Primary Investigator Project Title Institution
Iki Adachi, MD Subpulmonary assist device with magnetically levitated pump for Fontan circulation Texas Children’s Hospital
Dylan Burnette, PhD Mechanisms of ventricular hypertrophy in vitro and in vivo Vanderbilt University
Hina Chaudhry, MD Development of a Regenerative Therapy for Single Ventricle Disease Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Kevin Costa, PhD Cardiac micro-organ model of single ventricle heart disease Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Adelaide de Vecchi, PhD A novel imaging-modelling software tool to predict future neoaortic remodelling in Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome King’s College London
Jay Humphrey, PhD Understanding and Reducing Sequelae Associated with Single Ventricle Physiology from Birth Yale University
Walter Knirsch, MD Establishment of an animal model of HLHS in Switzerland – Expansion of the parent award analyzing late fetal hemodynamics using advanced MR techniques University Children’s Hospital Zurich
Kyle Loh, PhD CRISPRa/CRISPRi in hPSC-derived cell-types to accelerate SVD modeling and therapy Stanford University
Alison Marsden, PhD Exploratory In Vitro Study of Contractile Conduit Potential to Reverse the Fontan Stanford University
Megan McCain, PhD Establishing genotype-phenotype correlations and patient-specific drug responses for hypoplastic left heart syndrome with engineered heart-on-a-chip systems University of Southern California
Christina Theodoris, MD, PhD Transfer Learning to Map Gene Networks Driving Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome Gladstone Institutes
Joseph Wu, MD, PhD Elucidating Mechanisms of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome Using Cardiac Organoids and Single-Cell Analysis Stanford University
Previous Expansion Award Cycles

Since 2021, we have awarded nearly $1.5M to support single ventricle research through the annual Expansion Award mechanism, supporting 32 teams around the globe. Learn more about all our funded studies and view our Award Database here.