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Cardiovascular Science

We aim to better understand, diagnose and treat heart and vascular disease through our extensive cutting edge research programmes. We have a particular focus on understanding disease mechanisms and on new approaches to stratifying patients. Our expertise encompasses genetic studies to identify causative and risk genes, cardiovascular physiology and cellular biology to understand health and disease, the development and application of advanced imaging, experimental medicine and clinical trials.

'Go with the flow' captures the blood flowing within an adult heart frozen in time. It won the 2016 Reflections on Research competition, run by the British Heart Foundation. © Victoria Stoll, Oxford
'Go with the flow' captures the blood flowing within an adult heart frozen in time. It won the 2016 Reflections on Research competition, run by the British Heart Foundation.

Our research integrates basic and clinical research to maximise patient benefit. This theme incorporates three state of the art clinical research facilities – the Clinical Cardiovascular Research Facility, the Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research and the Acute Vascular Imaging Centre. Combined, these facilities give us a comprehensive view of cardiovascular physiology, metabolism and function in health and disease.

Our researchers lead the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre's Cardiovascular Theme and the British Heart Foundation's Centre for Research Excellence, as well as being  key collaborators in the British Heart Foundation's Centre for Regenerative Medicine, widening opportunities for collaboration.



Groups within this theme

The Diabetes Trials Unit (DTU) is a clinical trials unit specialising in performing local, national and multinational clinical trials related to treating and managing diabetes and other cardiometabolic and related conditions.
Adler Group: Diabetes Trials Unit
The Akbar Lab is interested in defining the therapeutic and diagnostic potential of extracellular vesicles for immunomodulation and precision medicine in cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammatory diseases.
Akbar Group: Extracellular Vesicles in Cardiovascular, Inflammatory and Metabolic Disease
Our group studies the interplay between adipose tissue and the cardiovascular system. Using translational approaches, we develop novel diagnostic tools for the early detection of cardiovascular diseases and risk stratification. We also work towards the discovery of new therapeutic targets for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, in the context of obesity and diabetes.
Antoniades Group: The Oxford Translational Cardiovascular Research Group
Ashrafian Group: Experimental Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology
Ashrafian Group: Experimental Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology
Use of minimally invasive techniques to improve heart function.
Banning Group
The CRM group’s principal research interests are the treatment of abnormal heart rhythms and the resynchronisation of abnormal electrical conduction in heart failure patients. There is a particular focus on the use of novel and emerging technologies.
Betts Group: Cardiac Rhythm Management
Our goals are to develop therapeutics targeting the chemokine network in inflammatory diseases affecting the heart, blood vessels and other organ systems.
Bhattacharya Group: Developing novel therapeutics for inflammatory diseases
The Laboratory of Cerebral Ischemia is a pre-clinical research group aiming to discover both the mechanisms which underlie cell death in stroke and to develop novel strategies to reduce this.
Buchan Group: Laboratory of Cerebral Ischemia
Our programme of work aims to understand nitric oxide (NO) and redox signalling in healthy and diseased myocardium, with a particular focus on atrial fibrillation (AF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Building on the resources and original discoveries that we have made recently, we plan to test novel interventions that aim to correct the myocardial substrate that promotes the new onset of AF, or HFpEF, or prevent the adverse atrial remodelling that is induced by AF.
Casadei Group: Translational approaches in chronic cardiac disease
We work to understand how early changes in cells of the cardiovascular system, such as endothelial cells and leukocytes, are related to cardiovascular disease, with a particular focus on redox biology.
Channon Group: Cardiovascular functional genomics and redox signalling
This translational science laboratory aims to understand the functionally important heterogeneity in human cardiovascular disease to allow stratification of pathology and enable targeted therapies.
Choudhury Group: Understanding Inflammatory processes in Atherosclerosis and Acute Myocardial Infarction
Defining the function of new causal atherosclerosis genes from CAD GWAS loci using in vitro and in vivo models.
Douglas Group: Functional coronary artery disease genetics
We have expertise in the study of heart disease using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), particularly quantitative techniques such as myocardial T1-mapping.
Ferreira Group: Quantitative cardiac magnetic resonance myocardial tissue characterisation
We research genetic diseases of the heart (cardiomyopathies) that can lead to sudden cardiac death. An example of an individual with cardiomyopathy is the professional football player Fabrice Muamba, who collapsed on the pitch and had to be resuscitated. He was fortunate to survive his cardiac arrest and his case was featured in the media.
Gehmlich group: Biomechanical stress signalling in the heart and its role in cardiomyopathies
We have performed a number of genome-wide association analyses and meta-analyses on different case/control phenotypes and quantitative traits. After discovering genetic loci, our main interest is to refine the locus for causal variants using different computational approaches and integrating epigenetic data. We also have experience in rare variant data analysis from whole genome sequencing data.
Goel Group: Cardiovascular genetics and bioinformatics
We focus on the mechanisms controlling the migration of leucocytes and tumour cells via lymph in health and disease.
Jackson Group: Lymphatic Trafficking Research Group
We apply an integrated approach to human metabolic disease which involves genetic, genomic, cell biology and whole body metabolic studies to understand the pathogenesis of the complications of obesity such as fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Karpe, Hodson and Christodoulides Group: Metabolic Research Group
Our group aims to make early diagnosis and continuous check-ups for (vascular) diseases accurate, affordable, and accessible for everyone. We focus on women’s vascular health and global health and aim to better understand the impact of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy on the brain.
Lapidaire Group: Brain Health Vascular Imaging
Our aim is to develop better ways to identify early disease and improve cardiovascular health for young people. This is achieved by undertaking work in three areas: (1) Identification of novel markers of early disease to better understand how disease becomes established (2) Performing cardiovascular prevention trials in young adults to understand how to modify early disease and improve health (3) Application of artificial intelligence to imaging and research datasets to identify next generation imaging and management approaches.
Leeson Group: Preventive Cardiology Research Group
Our group focuses on understanding how alterations to early human development affect long-term disease risk and how to reduce risk through nutritional and lifestyle interventions. Disruptions to normal development, including exposure to pregnancy complications such as being born preterm, are risk factors for early heart failure, stroke and cardiovascular events. To study early developmental changes, we use multi-modality imaging, activity monitoring, questionnaire data and birth records, as well as blood sample collection to study cellular pathways in fetal through to young adult human cohorts.
Lewandowski Group: Developmental Systems Physiology
We study how the heart meets its high and variable energy demands in order to identify novel strategies that may be beneficial in disease.
Lygate Group: Cardiac Energetics and Integrative Physiology
Our expertise is in clinical trials, whereby we aim to discover novel treatments for improving the health of patients with cardiac diseases. We use cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) and spectroscopy techniques to improve our understanding of myocardial metabolism and function, and for early detection of cardiac abnormalities in cardiomyopathy, heart failure, valve disease and diabetes. We use cardiopulmonary exercise test to understand cardiovascular exercise physiology, by studying how oxygen and other nutrients are used by the heart during exercise. We work closely with multidisciplinary research teams including MR physicists, biomedical engineers and other cardiac imaging experts in the UK and elsewhere in the world.
Mahmod group
We investigate diseases of the heart valves – how widespread the problem is, what the causes are, who is at risk from future problems and what treatments can improve outcomes for patients.
Myerson Group: Heart Valve Disease
OCMR uses sophisticated cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy methods to phenotype cardiovascular disease – in small-scale proof-of-principle studies, large-scale multicentre clinical trials and ultra-large scale population imaging programmes. As well as running their own research programmes, OCMR serves as a collaboration partner to any group wanting to strengthen their clinical research with state of the art non-invasive phenotyping tools.
Neubauer Group: Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research
We aim to further improve the clinical value of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance with application of advanced image analysis techniques.
Piechnik Group: Myocardial functional T1 mapping – Advanced cardiac magnetic resonance imaging techniques
We work on circadian rhythms, and nuclear receptors applied to both inflammation and energy metabolism. Our models range from cells to human populations.
Ray Group
Defining important functional paradigms that lead to inherited cardiomyopathies, in search of novel treatments.
Redwood Group: Cardiac Contractility
Our group aims to understand the microRNA-mediated mechanisms fundamental to cardiac fibrosis and electrical remodelling that are associated with atrial fibrillation (a very common rhythm disorder). We are particularly interested in functional cross-talk between two major cell types in the heart – myocytes and fibroblasts.
Reilly Group: Molecular signalling in adverse myocardial remodelling and fibrosis
We use multi-parametric cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and multinuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to non-invasively investigate the relationship between cardiac metabolism and cardiac function.
Rider Group: Obesity, Heart Failure, Linking Myocardial Metabolism and Function
Combining computational biology, computational chemistry, and machine learning techniques with biological big data to unravel the higher genomic code of life.
Sahakyan Group: Integrative Computational Biology and Machine Learning
We focus on systems level “big picture” approaches to understand gene regulation and build gene regulatory networks during development and disease in zebrafish, chick, lamprey and human models.
Sauka-Spengler Group: Gene Regulatory Networks in Development and Disease
Understanding key mechanisms that govern cardiac muscle function in health and disease
Toepfer Group: Cardiac Physiology and Disease Modeling
Development and Application of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy
Tyler Group
Vascular Mechanotransduction in health and disease.
Tzima Group: Mechanotransduction Group
Pushing the Limits of Multi-nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy of the Heart, Liver and Muscle
Valkovič Group: Body MRS Group
Using human genetics and functional genomics to understand inherited heart disease
Watkins Group: Inherited Heart Muscle Disease Group
We work with clinicians and MR scientists on a day-to-day basis to develop novel AI machine-learning approaches for cardiovascular imaging.
Zhang Group: Artificial Intelligence in Cardiovascular Imaging

BHF Centres

The BHF Centre of Research Excellence (BHF CRE) in Oxford brings together over 60 world leading clinical and basic science research groups, based in departments across the University of Oxford.

The Oxbridge BHF Centre of Regenerative Medicine (BHF CRM) brings together 26 world leading basic and translational research groups (13 based in Oxford, 12 based in Cambridge, and one based in Bristol) merging significant expertise in cardiovascular repair and regeneration (Oxford), wound healing (Bristol), with a major focus on stem cells (ESCs and iPSCs) and genetics in the context of regeneration (Cambridge).

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