Matthew Nayor, MD, MPH, Receives $5.7 Million NIH Award for Cardiovascular Research

Matthew Nayor, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine, has received a four-year, $5.7 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The award will fund his research project, “Proteomic Profiling of Precise Exercise Pathophenotypes Across the HFpEF Spectrum.”

Half of patients with heart failure have a condition known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), in which the heart muscle can’t relax to fill with blood. This means less oxygen and nutrient-rich blood is pumped out through the body. Despite its prevalence, there are limited tools to prevent, diagnose and treat this condition. The body’s response to the stress of exercise, however, may uncover abnormalities not apparent at rest that can help to diagnose HFpEF before the onset of symptoms.

In this study, Nayor and his collaborators, Ravi Shah, MD, from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Gregory Lewis, MD, from Massachusetts General Hospital, will measure more than 3,000 blood proteins in individuals from the Framingham Heart Study, and in individuals with HFpEF, undergoing exercise testing to better understand this disease, its pre-symptomatic indicators and potential treatments.

“Exercise limitations are a key component of heart failure, but most current assessments take place at rest. This project will use exercise response patterns to guide discovery of new biomarkers for HFpEF, which affects 50% of heart failure patients and is challenging to diagnose and treat,” says Nayor.

Nayor is a clinical-translational investigator and heart failure cardiologist. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Osler Medical Residency Training Program in Baltimore, Maryland, and a fellowship in cardiology, and heart failure and transplantation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Nayor’s research background includes basic science investigations, physiologic studies and cardiovascular epidemiology focusing on the intersection of metabolic health and cardiovascular disease. His group and collaborators have studied the effect of exercise on metabolism via assaying more than 500 circulating metabolites; physiologic determinants of fitness; novel protein biomarkers of heart failure risk through broad proteomic profiling and lifestyle contributors to cardiometabolic disease and heart failure, and other topics.

Nayor has worked with the Framingham Heart Study for the last eight years and currently leads community-based studies evaluating metabolic responses to discrete physiologic perturbations, such as exercise and a dietary intervention.