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Cleveland Clinic Receives $1 Million Grant from Skirball Foundation for Stem Cell Research
Cleveland Clinic has received a $1 million grant from The Skirball Foundation for research to generate stem cell-based therapies for cardiovascular disease.
The grant will support the Skirball Laboratory for Cardiovascular Cellular Therapeutics under the direction of Marc S. Penn, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Cleveland Clinic Cardiovascular Medicine Research Group for Cell Therapy. Researchers in the lab will study the mechanisms of different stem cell types to determine how cell-based therapies can be developed and used to restore normal heart function.
"Stem cell therapies hold the keys to identifying not only how we can preserve the heart after a heart attack, but how we can fully repair it,” Dr. Penn said. “This grant will enable us to explore the mechanisms of a variety of stem cell populations, ultimately giving us the basis for genetically engineering stem cells that can be used to repair damaged heart tissue."
Such research is particularly significant as the incidence of heart disease and heart attack risk in the United States continue to rise. In the United States, heart disease is the number one cause of death among men and women and there are almost 500,000 new cases of heart failure diagnosed each year.
Established in Ohio in 1950 and now based in New York City, The Skirball Foundation, was founded by brothers Jack and William Skirball. It funds arts and cultural activities in addition to programs in education, human services, Jewish welfare and medicine. Founder, Jack Skirball, is a former rabbi who became a successful motion-picture distributor and Academy Award-winning producer. William Skirball owned movie theatres throughout the Midwest and had his offices in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square. The stem cell research grant issued to Cleveland Clinic is the one of the largest issued by the Foundation in Ohio.