Research Highlights

Research is the foundation on which world-class medical education and patient care are built. UT Southwestern Medical Center's leading-edge research into the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of heart disease has led to important discoveries and has kept us at the forefront of medical progress.

We maintain active research programs in both basic and clinical domains. The basic laboratories, comprising about 30,000 square feet of research and office space, are housed in the modern Simmons Biomedical Research Building on UT Southwestern's North Campus.

Eleven laboratories are equipped to perform leading-edge investigation utilizing molecular and cellular approaches. The fundamental biology of the cardiac muscle cell is an area of particular emphasis.

Our team has been the first in many heart breakthroughs, including:

• The first statin drug to lower cholesterol levels in people at risk for cardiovascular disease was developed at UT Southwestern, based on the Nobel-Prize winning research of faculty members Joseph Goldstein, M.D. and Michael Brown, M.D.
• UT Southwestern researchers were the first to discover that antioxidants help prevent arteriosclerosis, including defining the variety of foods that are harmful to cardiovascular health as well as proving that antioxidants in diets help prevent arteriosclerosis.

Read about some of the heart disease research underway at UT Southwestern.