New effort launched to support earlier diagnosis, treatment of aortic stenosis

American Heart Association to connect patients, providers with clinical trial opportunities to advance new therapies

2025-11-04

(Press-News.org) DALLAS, November 3, 2025 — People living with aortic stenosis (AS) could gain earlier access to innovative care and treatment thanks to a new effort from the American Heart Association designed to boost clinical trial participation and speed diagnosis of this common but underdiagnosed heart valve condition.

AS is characterized by the narrowing of the aortic valve opening, which restricts blood flow from the heart to the body. Untreated, this can lead to severe complications, including heart failure and death.

The American Heart Association, devoted to changing the future to a world of healthier lives for all, is expanding its support for patients with moderate AS by launching a new effort to drive awareness of and access to clinical trials across its nationwide network of hospitals and heart valve clinics.

“Aortic stenosis is a serious condition, yet too often, people go undiagnosed until the disease progresses,” said Sreekanth Vemulapalli, M.D., the Association’s volunteer project clinical leader and volunteer member of the Target: Aortic Stenosis Scientific Advisory Group. Vemulapalli is also an associate professor of medicine at Duke University, a core faculty member at the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy and a member in the Duke Clinical Research Institute. “By identifying eligible participants for new clinical trials and supporting clinical research, this initiative will help shape the future of care for people affected by this disease.”

The initiative, supported by Kardigan, leverages the established infrastructure of the Association’s Target: Aortic Stenosis™ program. More than 2,200 people with moderate AS are already managed through the Association’s existing quality improvement network. This new effort will engage at least 40 hospitals and their affiliated heart valve clinics to connect more individuals with research opportunities, promoting emerging medical therapy alternatives and advancing guideline-based care.

“We’re proud to support this American Heart Association initiative to help connect patients with moderate aortic stenosis to promising research opportunities,” said Jay Edelberg, M.D., Ph.D., co-founder and chief medical officer at Kardigan. “At Kardigan, we are on a mission to revolutionize the treatment of cardiovascular diseases by moving beyond symptom management and redefining care where patients and their families need it most and where therapies don’t currently exist. Improving access to clinical trials will not only advance innovation, but also help more people receive the diagnosis and treatment they need sooner.”

As part of this new effort, the Association will provide professional education, quality improvement tools and site-level support to help clinicians better identify and refer individuals eligible for clinical trials. A health care provider climate survey will also explore barriers to trial enrollment and inform solutions that increase participation in structural heart disease research.

The Target: Aortic Stenosis™ program is also supported by Edwards Lifesciences.

Additional Resources:

Spanish news release (coming soon) Patients: Learn how to identify symptoms and understand risks Health Care Professionals: Stay up-to-date with the latest programs, resources, science and webinars ###

About the American Heart Association

The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. Dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities, the organization has been a leading source of health information for more than one hundred years. Supported by more than 35 million volunteers globally, we fund groundbreaking research, advocate for the public’s health, and provide critical resources to save and improve lives affected by cardiovascular disease and stroke. By driving breakthroughs and implementing proven solutions in science, policy, and care, we work tirelessly to advance health and transform lives every day. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook, X or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1.   

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Registration and Abstract Submission Open for “20 Years of iPSC Discovery: A Celebration and Vision for the Future,” 20-22 October 2026, Kyoto, Japan

2025-11-04

The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) today announced that registration and abstract submission are open for the ISSCR International Symposium: 20 Years of iPSC Discovery: A Celebration and Vision for the Future, co-sponsored by the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine. The symposium will take place 20–22 October 2026 in Kyoto, Japan. Developed in partnership with the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA) at Kyoto University, the scientific program is chaired by Shinya Yamanaka, recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the ...

Half-billion-year-old parasite still threatens shellfish

2025-11-04

A new study has unexpectedly discovered that a common parasite of modern oysters actually started infecting bivalves hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs went extinct. The research, published in iScience, used high-resolution 3D scans to look inside 480-million-year-old shells from a Moroccan site known for its exceptionally well-preserved sea life. The scans revealed a series of distinctive patterns etched both on the surface of the fossils and hidden inside them. “The marks weren’t random scratches,” said Karma Nanglu, a UC Riverside paleobiologist who led the research. “We saw seven or eight of these perfect question mark shapes on each ...

Engineering a clearer view of bone healing

2025-11-04

Healing a broken bone can take months, and knowing whether recovery is on track often takes just as long. Doctors typically rely on periodic X-rays, capturing two-dimensional images to see how the bone is growing back together. Patients return for follow-up scans every few weeks or months, repeating the cycle until the bone shows signs of complete healing. Healing of shin bone (tibia) fractures, in particular, slows or stalls up to 25% of the time. Factors such as age or underlying health conditions like diabetes can influence the speed of fracture healing. Delayed or incomplete ...

Detecting heart issues in breast cancer survivors

2025-11-04

As breast cancer survival rates continue to climb — 4.3 million women in the U.S. are currently living with a history of the disease and in the next 10 years that number is expected to rise by another million — heart health has become an increasingly important part of survivorship care. Certain breast cancer therapies, while lifesaving, can also place stress on the heart, raising important questions about who might benefit from closer monitoring. But does every breast cancer survivor need ...

Moffitt study finds promising first evidence of targeted therapy for NRAS-mutant melanoma

2025-11-04

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers report the first clinical activity of a RAS inhibitor in patients with NRAS-mutant melanoma. The investigational drug daraxonrasib (RMC-6236) and its preclinical counterpart RMC-7977 bind active RAS proteins (NRAS, HRAS, KRAS) and block downstream signaling that drives tumor growth, survival and immune escape. In laboratory models, treatment led to increased infiltration of activated T cells, reduction of suppressive immune cells and tumor eradication only when the immune ...

Lay intuition as effective at jailbreaking AI chatbots as technical methods

2025-11-04

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — It doesn’t take technical expertise to work around the built-in guardrails of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, which are intended to ensure that the chatbots operate within a set of legal and ethical boundaries and do not discriminate against people of a certain age, race or gender. A single, intuitive question can trigger the same biased response from an AI model as advanced technical inquiries, according to a team led by researchers at Penn State. “A lot of research on AI bias has relied on sophisticated ...

USC researchers use AI to uncover genetic blueprint of the brain’s largest communication bridge

2025-11-04

For the first time, a research team led by the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has mapped the genetic architecture of a crucial part of the human brain known as the corpus callosum—the thick band of nerve fibers that connects the brain’s left and right hemispheres. The findings open new pathways for discoveries about mental illness, neurological disorders and other diseases related to defects in this part of the brain. The corpus callosum is critical for nearly everything the brain does, from coordinating ...

Tiny swarms, big impact: Researchers engineering adaptive magnetic systems for medicine, energy and environment

2025-11-04

Rice University is partnering with researchers at the University of Washington, Columbia University and Louisiana State University on a $2 million award from the National Science Foundation to revolutionize how materials and microrobots can be designed, controlled and applied in real-world environments. Funded through NSF’s Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) program, the four-year project — Adaptive and Responsive Magnetic Swarms (ARMS) — aims to create microscopic robotic swarms that move and think collectively, much like schools of fish or flocks of birds. Led by principal investigator Zach ...

MSU study: How can AI personas be used to detect human deception?

2025-11-04

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Can an AI persona detect when a human is lying – and should we trust it if it can? Artificial intelligence, or AI, has had many recent advances and continues t evolve in scope and capability. A new Michigan State University–led study is diving deeper into how well AI can understand humans by using it to detect human deception. In the study, published in the Journal of Communication, researchers from MSU and the University of Oklahoma conducted 12 experiments with over 19,000 AI participants to examine how well AI personas were ...

Slowed by sound: A mouse model of Parkinson’s Disease shows noise affects movement

2025-11-04

In the development of Parkinson’s disease, it may not be a good idea to turn the amp to 11. High-volume noise exposure produced motor deficits in a mouse model of early-stage Parkinson’s disease, and established a link between the auditory processing and movement areas of the brain, according to a study published November 4th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Pei Zhang from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and colleagues. The environment can play an important role in the development of Parkinson’s disease, but how sound volume in particular might impact the severity of symptoms was unknown. To understand how ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Sylvester researchers lead major treatment overhauls for acute myeloid leukemia

New global guidelines streamline environmental microbiome research

Small changes make some AI systems more brain-like than others

Asia PGI and partners unveil preview of PathGen: New AI-powered outbreak intelligence tool

Groundbreaking technique unlocks secrets of bacterial shape-shifting

Studies reevaluate reverse weathering process, shifts understanding of global climate

What time is it on Mars? NIST physicists have the answer

Findings suggest red planet was warmer, wetter millions of years ago

Renewable lignin waste transformed into powerful catalyst for clean hydrogen production

UTEP researcher finds potential new treatment for aggressive ovarian cancer

Everyday repellent, global pollutant

Iron fortified hemp biochar helps keep “forever chemicals” out of radishes and the food chain

Corticosteroid use does not appear to increase infectious complications in non-COVID-19 pneumonia

All life copies DNA unambiguously into proteins. Archaea may be the exception.

A new possibility for life: Study suggests ancient skies rained down ingredients

Coral reefs have stabilized Earth’s carbon cycle for the past 250 million years

Francisco José Sánchez-Sesma selected as 2026 Joyner Lecturer

In recognition of World AIDS Day 2025, Gregory Folkers and Anthony Fauci reflect on progress made in antiretroviral treatments and prevention of HIV/AIDS, highlighting promising therapeutic developmen