Leading Advances in Heart Disease and Stroke

October 2024 marked the 50th anniversary of the ACRC. When it was established in 1974 through a five-year, $25 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), it was the first major multidisciplinary research initiative at Iowa. One component of the new center was an NIH Institutional Research Fellowship Training Grant, which received continual NIH grant renewal funding through 2023.

François Abboud, MD (61R), who in the early 1970s served as director of the cardiology division in the Department of Internal Medicine—and who would go on to serve as chair of the department from 1976 to 2002—led the effort to establish the center. He envisioned a new paradigm for cardiovascular research at Iowa with a focus on the fundamental mechanisms of heart and vascular disease. 

Abboud’s own research focused on autonomic and cardiovascular regulation and has served as a foundational basis for treatments of heart failure and hypertension. In fact, Iowa researchers became nationally recognized leaders in describing how the cardiovascular and nervous systems regulate each other. Other major discoveries identified key molecules and pathways that send electrical and chemical signals in the heart and are associated with hypertension, obesity, atherosclerosis, and heart attack.

In December 2013, the Iowa Board of Regents honored Abboud’s 40 years of Cardiovascular Research Center leadership by naming the center after him.

Two physician-scientists have led the center after Abboud: Mark Anderson, MD, PhD (2012-2014), who also served as chair of the Department of Internal Medicine from 2009-2014, and Barry London, MD, PhD (2015-present). London also is director of the cardiovascular medicine division in the UI Department of Internal Medicine.

“The history of the cardiovascular center has been to be at the forefront of basic science research, both in terms of the types of research that we were doing and in terms of developing physician-scientists and PhD scientists whose focus was predominantly basic research,” London says. “One of the things that we've done over the last decade is to try to broaden that scope. That includes working to develop an outcomes research program—expanding clinical and translational research that's been done—and developing collaborations and supporting projects that are relevant for industry.”

François Abboud, MD (61R), is recognized for his research showing that the heart plays a major role as a neurosensory organ—a finding that advanced scientific understanding of autonomic control of circulation. As a result, clinicians became more informed and better equipped to treat conditions such as heart disease, obstructive sleep apnea, and hypertension.

But when Abboud began studying neural control of circulation in the early 1960s, the subject was considered a physiological curiosity with little clinical significance. Abboud’s work changed this and ultimately expanded the field of cardiovascular research. 

A few examples: Abboud and his colleagues were the first to prove that insulin activates the nervous system to raise blood pressure when blood sugar levels decrease. Abboud’s team also discovered that salt intake constricts blood vessels in people who are susceptible to high blood pressure. And a study of obstructive sleep apnea led by Abboud was the first to record heightened sympathetic nerve activity and consequent surges in blood pressure in otherwise normal patients whose breathing stopped repeatedly while they were asleep. The study also reported the benefits of CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) therapy, the primary treatment used today for obstructive sleep apnea.

Abboud is also regarded as a pioneer in forming multidisciplinary teams to study heart disease and related conditions—basic scientists and clinicians from internal medicine, molecular physiology and biophysics, neurology, pulmonology, biochemistry, and pharmacology, for example.

"It's common today,” Abboud said in a 2009 web profile, “but when we started, it was still a unique approach—the idea that if you brought together people with different areas of expertise, you would have a convergence of ideas and a different way of approaching problems that might not be possible if everyone is working separately in his or her own lab.”

Abboud’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute program project grant, funded from 1971 to 2020, was at the time the longest continuously supported grant under the same principal investigator. When it was established at Iowa, it was the first major interdepartmental, intercollegiate research program at the medical school.

A UI faculty member since 1960, Abboud’s impact and commitment to service extended beyond the university. He served as president of the Association of American Physicians, which awarded him the George M. Kober Medal—its highest honor—in 2009. He also served as president of the American Clinical and Climatological Association, the American Federation for Clinical Research, and the American Heart Association, which named him a Distinguished Scientist for 2007. He’s also received major awards from the American College of Cardiology and the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“Frank came to Iowa, stayed in Iowa, poured all his love and energy into Iowa, and championed cardiovascular research—and more broadly, a mechanism of growing it through collaborative efforts,” says Mark Anderson, MD, PhD, a former chair of the UI Department of Internal Medicine and former director of the Abboud Cardiovascular Research Center who now serves as executive vice president for medical affairs and dean of the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.