Fayad Lab
Principal Investigator: Zahi A. Fayad
Institution: Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, NY)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY Psychosocial stress is a critical risk factor for cardiovascular disease. However, current cardiovascular risk management strategies include few evidence-based interventions to address psychosocial stress’s detrimental effects on this disease. With the current global events, notably the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing burden of atherosclerotic heart disease, modulating stress’ effects is warranted. The goal of our current proposal is mechanistically understanding psychosocial stress’s impact on the immune system and inflammatory atherosclerosis to lower residual cardiovascular risk in patients. Over the course of our Type-1 Program, we substantially contributed to knowledge about the links between psychosocial stress and cardiovascular disease by identifying tissular, cellular, and molecular pathways that connect nervous, immune, and vascular systems. Specifically, we found that stress perception mechanisms influence atherosclerosis development and regression. We developed sophisticated tools to study specific brain regions and their contributions to stress perception. We made substantial progress on translational imaging studies in atherosclerosis. In…
Active NIH Awards
- 5P01HL131478-09: Stress-induced immune reprogramming in cardiovascular disease (2026)
- 5P01AI168258-04: Administrative, data management and biostatistics core (2026)
- 5P01HL131478-09: Administrative Core (2026)
- 1R01HL182100-01A1: Data-Consistent Motion-Correction Reconstruction for PET/MR Imaging of Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque Activity (2026)
- 5P01AI168258-04: Targeting trained immunity in transplantation (2026)
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