The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has awarded £7.1M funding to a unique national training programme that will tackle one of the most urgent, under-recognised challenges in cardiovascular medicine: the bidirectional link between heart and brain diseases.
The Connecting Hearts And mINds (CHAIN) consortium seeks to unravel the heart-brain axis, investigating an area of enormous medical importance, underpinning diseases that include vascular dementia, myocardial infarction (heart attack) and atrial fibrillation, amongst many others. The Programme aligns perfectly with the UoL existing research strengths and their ambition to solve key challenges with integrative solutions and multidisciplinary approaches.
Delivered collaboratively by the Universities of Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester, the new PhD Programme will train 40 of the UK's most promising scientists to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and adopt integrated approaches to heart-brain health.
Together, they will uncover the biological and societal drivers that link heart and brain diseases, develop new tools for early detection, create predictive digital models for personalised care, and design therapies that target shared pathways across both organ systems. This integrated approach reflects the growing need for preventative, system-level solutions as populations age and multimorbidity rises.
Recognising the need for integrative research linking heart and brain diseases, the programme is centred on the principles of multidisciplinary. Students will work on ambitious cross-disciplinary projects spanning discovery bioscience, engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, imaging, epidemiology and behavioural science. Bringing these different perspectives together will enable new insights into complex disease processes and help drive innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges in cardiovascular and neurological health.
Cohort-based training across all three universities, alongside strong industry partnerships and access to world-leading infrastructure, will provide students with a rich and collaborative research environment. Together, these opportunities will equip them with the skills, networks and experience needed to become the future leaders driving innovation in cardiovascular and neurological research, with real impact for patients and health systems alike.
Professor Deirdre Lane, Professor of Cardiovascular Health and Head of Department, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine at the University of Liverpool said: "This new BHF-funded Doctoral Training Programme offers an exceptional opportunity for emerging scientists to investigate one of the most important connections in human health-the relationship between the heart and the brain. By leveraging our collective interdisciplinary expertise and supporting talented PhD researchers, we hope to deepen our understanding of how these two vital systems interact and to train the next generation of scientists who will drive progress in cardiovascular and neurological science."
Professor Louise Kenny, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool said: "We are proud to be part of this ambitious programme, which brings together world‑leading expertise to tackle the critical, interconnected challenges of heart and brain health. By training researchers to consider these problems through a multidisciplinary lens, the CHAIN Consortium will accelerate discovery and drive innovation that improves outcomes for patients and communities. This collaboration reflects our commitment to research that delivers real and lasting impact."
The programme application was led by Dr Gina Galli (University of Manchester), Professor Deirdre Lane (University of Liverpool) and Professor Alastair Poole (University of Bristol), who will be Directors of the new programme. For Liverpool, this represents a new and exciting opportunity to co-lead a BHF-funded PhD programme training present and future generations of cardiovascular researchers.
Click here to find out more about the programme.
