coronary artery disease

(Scripps Research Institute) Researchers investigating a root cause for heart attacks and coronary artery disease will soon begin a novel investigative approach bordering on science fiction in pursuit of the holy grail of American medicine: preventing the nation's No. 1 killer.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $7.9 million grant to the Scripps Translational Science Institute of San Diego and Sangamo BioSciences of Richmond, Calif., to conduct the nation's first-ever, heart-based "disease in a dish" research.

• Volcano Corporation (NASDAQ: VOLC) announced today that it has acquired the Xtract™ Thrombus Aspiration Catheter device line from Lumen Biomedical.
  
  Volcano became the exclusive global distributor of the Xtract™ catheter in May 2009. This acquisition reinforces Volcano's dedication to build a strategic portfolio of diagnostic and therapeutic tools to help patients with coronary artery disease at all levels of complexity, including acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or heart attacks.

(University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston) Back in the 1970s, while watching an angioplasty to widen clogged coronary arteries, John Simpson, Ph.D., M.D., thought there had to be an easier way to perform the procedure.

There was, and Simpson, who trained at the University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston, invented the medical device to do it.

It was the first of a series of inventions by the cardiologist that have helped many with coronary artery disease.