Cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity are the most frequent causes of morbidity and mortality in Western societies.

A large component of contemporary biomedical research on these diseases focuses upon the signal transduction pathways that regulate cell growth and differentiation, programmed cell death (apoptosis), cellular stress, and the maintenance of physiologic homeostasis.

Alterations in these complex and interrelated pathways are responsible for the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

The Human Genome Project and the other related genomics projects produced an expanded inventory of the gene expression profiles of normal and diseased tissues from human and experimental animals. This genetic inventory initiated an elucidation of the signal transduction pathways that are involved in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.

Cancer researchers have focused extensively upon apoptotic regulation of malignant tumor cell growth. However, cardiovascular researchers have only recently focused on this process as being a potential mechanism that modulates myocardial cell death during ischemia and heart failure.

This is exemplified by the oncogene and protein kinase, Akt, which prevents apoptosis in tumor cells and promotes myocardial cell viability by delaying apoptosis. Similarly, Akt delays neuronal cell death during cerebral ischemia. Finally, Akt is responsible for the maintenance of pancreatic islet beta cell function and reduction of Akt protein expression induces diabetes. The MAP kinase family is another example of a group of signal transduction proteins that impact myocardial and cerebral ischemia, cancer and diabetes.

These are but two examples of a rapidly expanding list of signal transduction pathways with involvement in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes.

The South Dakota Health Research Foundation has received State funding in the amount of $900,000/year, in conjunction with The University of South Dakota, to develop the Signal Transduction Center. This state funding is from the South Dakota 2010 Initiative. Please see the link for more information about this program