Organ Specific Project - Heart

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PROJECT SUMMARY – HEART ORGAN SPECIFIC PROJECT The human heart is vital for our survival and health, and it presents remarkable anatomical, cellular and functional heterogeneity. The four chambers of the heart, together with specialized arteries, veins, valves and conduction cells, perform distinct yet essential physiological functions. A significant gap of knowledge is that different cell's molecular signature, spatial distribution and interactions, and functional state remain little understood at the single-cell level. The goal of the heart Organ-Specific Project (OSP) is to address this knowledge gap and generate high quality, single-cell resolution, longitudinal imaging and multiomics data of normal human hearts across the entire human lifespan. To achieve this goal, we propose the following three specific aims: 1) To refine protocols of biospecimen processing, multiomics and imaging assays and define inter-individual variability using our existing banked normal human hearts. 2) To procure, archive and annotate high-quality normal heart samples across the entire human life span. We have established a streamlined procurement and biorepository infrastructure to support our heart OSP. We will procure normal heart and bone from the same donor of 5 different age groups across the entire human life span. 3) To spatially and quantitatively profile normal heart specimens across the entire human lifespan using a set of robust and scalable imaging and single-cell omics assays. In summary, the heart OSP will broadly impact the entire research community and jumpstart basic-science and medical discoveries based on a sophisticated understanding of the key molecular circuits underlying the development and aging of human heart.