When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, their focus is understandably on beating the disease. But for some patients, the very treatments that save their lives from cancer can unexpectedly damage their hearts. Meanwhile, some patients are sometimes struck down by sudden cardiac death from a genetic condition that doctors are still struggling to fully understand. Two groundbreaking research projects funded by the Heart Failure Research Foundation are tackling these critical challenges head-on.
Understanding Why Hearts Fail After Cancer Treatment
Dr. Yuri Kim at Harvard Medical School is investigating a troubling phenomenon: some cancer survivors develop severe heart problems after chemotherapy. While doctors know certain cancer drugs can be toxic to the heart, they can't always predict who will be affected. Even more puzzling, only some patients with genetic risk factors actually develop heart failure.
Dr. Kim's research uses cutting-edge technology to examine heart tissue at the cellular level—essentially creating a detailed map of what goes wrong in the hearts of patients with cancer therapy-induced cardiomyopathy. By comparing diseased hearts to healthy ones, she's identifying the specific cells and genes that malfunction when cancer treatments damage the heart. This work could eventually help doctors identify high-risk patients before starting treatment and develop targeted therapies to protect the heart during cancer care.
"The goal is to better understand how cancer treatments damage the heart," Dr. Kim explains. "This will hopefully lead to new ways to prevent or treat heart damage, improving the cardiovascular health of people who survive cancer."
Solving the Mystery of Sudden Death
Dr. Joseph Palatinus at the University of Utah is investigating an equally urgent question: why do some people with genetic heart mutations suddenly develop life-threatening heart failure, while their family members with identical mutations remain healthy?
Dr. Palatinus, a critical care cardiologist, was inspired by a patient who developed severe heart rhythm problems shortly after recovering from COVID-19, followed by another episode after an influenza infection. He believes viral infections may trigger the disease in people carrying certain genetic mutations—a "two-hit" hypothesis where genetics load the gun, but an environmental factor pulls the trigger.
His research focuses on arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), a genetic disease that accounts for 22% of sudden deaths in young adults. Using sophisticated mouse models that mirror human disease, Dr. Palatinus has already shown that inducing inflammation in the heart can trigger dangerous heart rhythms and sudden death in animals with ACM mutations, while those without the mutation remain unaffected.
"This work will allow us to understand how and why heart failure develops after viral infections in patients with ACM mutations and suggest novel treatment strategies," says Dr. Palatinus.
The Power of Philanthropic Support
Both researchers received 2025 Emerging Leader Grants from the Heart Failure Research Foundation, providing crucial funding during the critical early stages of their careers. These awards do more than support individual investigators—they invest in the future of cardiovascular medicine.
The Heart Failure Research Foundation, an initiative of the Heart Failure Society of America, depends on charitable donations to fund promising research that might not yet qualify for traditional research grants. These early-stage projects often represent the most innovative thinking in the field, tackling questions that could transform how we prevent and treat heart disease.
Every charitable gift to the Heart Failure Research Foundation helps fund research that could save lives. Donor support makes life-saving research possible.
To learn more about supporting cardiovascular research and helping fund the next generation of discoveries, visit hfsa.org/foundation. Your contribution could help turn today's promising research into tomorrow's medical breakthroughs.
