Ontario is fortunate to have a cadre of world-class researchers who help to improve the quality of patient care, the education of health care professionals and scientists, and who make amazing new developments in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular medicine. Unfortunately, the needs of our research community outstrip the Foundation's ability to raise funds. In order to spread the money around as much as possible, we cut the budgets of projects drastically. Up to half of the Foundation's research budget is spent on basic research, studies of the basic mechanisms of the cardiovascular system. Despite the advances of the last forty years, scientists still know relatively little about the basic mechanisms of the cardiovascular system, which makes it extremely difficult to prevent cardiovascular diseases from developing or treating them once they occur.
Basic research is the source of new ideas, knowledge and approaches.
For example, it was a basic researcher who, approximately fifteen years ago, discovered that the heart produces a hormone. Further research by this basic scientists uncovered that this hormone is key in the regulation of blood pressure. Today, this basic discovery is the basis for a new class of drugs to control blood pressure. The rest of the Foundation's research program is concerned with developing procedures, drugs or devices that can prevent, diagnose or treat heart disease in patients, the patients of the future, or potential patients. Clinical research is essential if we are to determine which therapies really work, which don't and should be stopped, and how therapies or programs are best administered.