NORA ECCLES HARRISON
CARDIOVASCULAR RESEARCH &
TRAINING INSTITUTE

Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI) delivers cutting-edge cell-to-bedside research and education of cardiovascular disease, which is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. At the CVRTI, we are both developing new insights into the biology of heart muscle cells, and developing novel therapeutics for patients with heart failure and cardiac arrhythmias such as sudden cardiac death.

Located at the University of Utah, the CVRTI nucleates a campus wide, multidisciplinary team of fourteen individual investigator laboratories who are both scientists and physician scientists. The research of the laboratories spans from basic muscle biology and channel electrophysiology to metabolism and genetics. Founded in 1969, the CVRTI is one of the oldest cardiovascular institutes in the country, and its research has already impacted clinical care from development of the first artificial heart, to the genetic basis of long QT arrhythmias, to using electricity to map heart dimensions for arrhythmia ablation, to myocardial recovery.

The heart is a muscle, and, like other muscles in the body, it uses chemical energy to power contraction. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the primary source of this energy, and most cardiac ATP (up to 90%) comes from fatty acids, while the remaining ATP comes from lactate, amino acids, ketone bodies, and glucose.