The American Heart Association selected Dr. Hooi Hooi Ng to receive the award that recognizes early-career investigator partners who perform high-quality research in arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology.
Ng received a grant from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine pilot program to begin her vascular calcification research. Common and potentially dangerous, vascular calcifications are mineral deposits on the walls of blood vessels. They are most often associated with aging and people with chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension.
Calcifications can lead to heart disease, stroke, and renal (kidney) failure. There are no current drugs to prevent or treat vascular calcifications.
“We want to develop a novel (new) treatment that allows us to intervene early in high-risk patients, so they don’t develop calcifications,” she said.
Ng’s research is a collaboration across FIU’s research community. A postdoctoral associate in the lab of Alexander Agoulnik at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and in the BME Cardiovascular Matrix Remodeling Laboratory where is mentored by Professor Joshua Hutcheson. All three scientists collaborate in the Biomolecular Sciences Institute, a multidisciplinary consortium of FIU researchers housed in the College of Arts and Sciences.