# Comprehensive Structural and Functional Mapping of the Mammalian Cardiac Nervous System

> **NIH NIH OT2** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2021 · $2,434,142

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure, arrhythmias, and hypertension are leading causes of morbidity
and mortality in the United States and world-wide. The autonomic nervous system plays a critical role in the
pathophysiology of these diseases and neuraxial modulation provides an important avenue for therapeutic
intervention. The major goal of our research team is to precisely define the cardiac neural hierarchy and
develop circuit diagrams from the macroscopic to cellular and molecular levels and share these data on an
ongoing basis with the scientific community. This effort will also provide verified methods and tools for
assessing neuromodulation. The research team will make them freely available to the scientific community. A
multiscale, multidisciplinary approach across various species, highly relevant to human disease, will be used to
define the anatomy of cardiac innervation in high definition. Neural structure will be linked to cardiac function.
The complexity of cardiac neural control necessitates an integrative approach that will represent a tour de force
in this field. State-of-the-art anatomical, physiological, and pharmacological approaches from `cells to man'
must be combined in order to achieve the above goals. This approach will be utilized at each level of the
neuraxis (heart, extracardiac intrathoracic neural structures and extrathoracic neural structures). The
techniques proposed will allow, for the first time, a detailed description of the anatomical and molecular
interactions at the synaptic and cell body levels in cardiac and extracardiac ganglia. The techniques used and
the integration of these pathways represents the most innovative attempt to understand cardiac neural control
ever undertaken. Understanding these pathways has the potential to accelerate development of therapies that
will be able to precisely target neural structures and also guide methods to re-purpose already available
therapies (e.g. nerve stimulators) for therapeutic purposes. Ultimately, these approaches are required to
develop novel, effective, and affordable interventions for the management and prevention of heart disease and
sudden cardiac death.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10428804
- **Project number:** 3OT2OD023848-01S7
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** IGOR R EFIMOV
- **Activity code:** OT2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $2,434,142
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-09-24 → 2023-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10428804

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10428804, Comprehensive Structural and Functional Mapping of the Mammalian Cardiac Nervous System (3OT2OD023848-01S7). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10428804. Licensed CC0.

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