The laboratories are maze-like, weaving in and out several adjoined rooms, which used to be many different classrooms, San Diego State biology professor Mark Sussman said. Throughout the years he has transformed and “gobbled up” these classrooms for his cardiovascular research.
The Integrated Regenerative Research Institute opened in November, but has been in the making for approximately 10 years, according to Sussman. He explained his journey into cardiovascular research as a series of events impacting his personal life during a approximately 25-year time span.
“It was one of those situations of being in the right place in the right time and something happens and you get carried along by the current,” Sussman said.
Sussman currently has approximately 40 students working for the institute. SDSU biology alumna Anya Joyo and Lucy Ornachea worked together to create a virus to test the effects of specific genes on the heart.
Most of these students are biology majors, although their level of education varies from undergraduate to post-doctorate. The institute has an annual operating budget of about $1.5 million, which is provided by the National Institutes of Health.
The institute is working to create other options for individuals with heart problems, particularly the use of stem cells to heal a damaged heart. While the heart is capable of generating new cells and growing, it does this throughout many years, Sussman said.
“When I was your age, we were taught that your heart and your brain and some other things in your body didn’t grow back—that once they got damaged, that was it,” Sussman said.
The main goal for Sussman, along with others in the institute, is to discover a way to shorten this healing process from years to weeks. The implications of this research could lead to more options for those suffering with heart disease, which, as Sussman explained, are limited with current resources.
“You really only have two choices, one of which is a heart transplant and the other possibility is a mechanical pump, which is called an assist device,” Sussman said. “You can’t live with that forever. It’s just something they put into you to keep you alive while hopefully a donor heart shows up.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. The possibility of Sussman and his team discovering new methods for treating a damaged heart could thus affect millions of people every year.
