The Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute of Boston University Medical Campus (BUMC) was established in 1974 to foster advances in research, treatment, and education in the broad area of heart and vascular disease. The Institute provides a unified structure that combines and integrates the components of basic science, clinical investigation, medical education, patient care, health-policy planning, and community research.

Over the past half century, some of the Medical Center’s most distinguished research advances have been in the areas of hypertension, vascular disease, lipid metabolism, heart failure, and atherosclerosis.

In the past three decades, the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute has been singled out by the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute as a Specialized Center of Research in Hypertension, and as a Specialized Center of Research in Ischemic Heart Disease. The Specialized Center designation indicates that the Institute serves as a site for important medical research in the national interest. In addition, it was recently designated a Center for Cardiovascular Proteomics through support from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.