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| Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, FAHA |
Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD, FAHA, of the Department of Medicine, received the 2024 Merit Award from the American Heart Association (AHA). This five-year, $1 million prize will support his research on the link between heart disease and certain foods or chemicals naturally contained in foods. This award is one of the highest honors given by the AHA and supports highly promising, novel research that has the potential to move cardiovascular science forward quickly, with high impact.
Using high-speed computers and model systems, Loscalzo plans to explore many of the 135,000 naturally occurring chemicals that have been identified in the world’s food supply. His research will focus on how these food chemicals interact with proteins in cells to affect how the cell works and, ultimately, which chemicals may protect the heart. Using this information, his team will then investigate ways to use these compounds to create diets that specifically protect against heart disease and lay the groundwork for developing new drugs that can be used for heart disease treatment.
Loscalzo is the former chair of the Department of Medicine and physician-in-chief emeritus at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also the Distinguished Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and the Samuel A. Levine Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
The AHA is the nation’s oldest and largest voluntary organization dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke.
