Facilities

Research environment in the Hypertension and Vascular Research Division at Henry Ford Hospital

Henry Ford Health is a major research and teaching institution in southeastern Michigan. Currently we are conducting approximately 2000 basic and clinical research projects that bring in more than $130 million ranking us 20th among independent research hospitals within the U.S. and fourth in the state of Michigan among all academic institutions, including the major public research universities (University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University). Here 110 full-time research scientists have formed an established core of basic and translational science in 5 centers of excellence. Altogether the wet bench lab space for basic research exceeds 120,000 sq. ft. divided among 60 separate laboratories. Henry Ford Health has several core research facilities including Bioinformatics, MRI, electron microscopy, fluorescence-activated cell sorting, statistical, confocal/imaging (offering a variety of whole animal imaging modalities and laser scanning and two photon confocal microscopes). The system also provides more than $11 million a year from an endowment to support funded investigators and their laboratories.

Henry Ford Health also has both Safety and Institutional Recombinant DNA Biosafety Committees.

The Hypertension and Vascular Research Division faculty are affiliated with Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit since 2005 and with Michigan State University since 2024. The medical campus of Wayne State is less than 2 miles from the Henry Ford Hospital main campus. All faculty at the HVRD have appointments in basic departments in the School of Medicine, and are eligible to train graduate (Ph.D.), undergraduates (MS) and medical science training program (M.D., Ph.D.) students. The hypertension research faculty currently mentors graduate students and MD/Ph students, teach in the departmental curriculum, and are involved in numerous research collaborations with the faculty at Wayne State. The HFHS faculty also have open access to the medical library and many research core facilities available at Wayne State University.

The Hypertension and Vascular Research Division (HVRD) at the Henry Ford Hospital

The Hypertension and Vascular Research Division (HVRD) is part of the Department of Internal Medicine. Research in the Division has been funded by NIH since 1975, and it is currently led by Dr. Pablo A. Ortiz Ph.D. Since July 2020, the HVRD became an integral component of the joint HFH/Wayne State University initiative, named Detroit Cardio-Metabolic Research Initiative. This initiative aims at establishing a Research Center on this topic in which most members are located within the same building. Most HVRD members have no clinical responsibilities and conduct basic or translational research on mechanisms of hypertension and metabolic diseases with a focus on the mechanisms of kidney diseases, obesity related disorders such as fatty liver disease, diabetic induced end organ damage (Kidney and heart) and genetics of hypertension. Under leadership of Dr. Ortiz, the HVRD currently brings in more than $4.5 million annually in federal and agency support for its research programs. In 2020, HVRD relocated to the Interdisciplinary Biological science building (iBio Wayne State University) where the laboratories occupy more than 16,000 sq. ft. and are dedicated to: in vivo and in vitro renal and cardiac physiology, hepatic and obesity phenotyping; biochemistry; molecular biology, imaging and Next-Gen sequencing. Dr. Ortiz and HVRD maintain 4 Cores:

1. An imaging core: includes one multi-photon/confocal microcopy (2018 Leica TCSP8), 3 confocal microscopes (Leica SP8 Stellaris, Visitech International, Olympus), one TIRF microscopy system (Nikon) and 2 epifluorescence system for live cell tubule/cell imaging;
2. Next-Gen sequencing Core: Ion Torrent (Ion GeneStudio Prime, Ion Chef) from Thermo Fisher, automated RNA/DNA extraction, Qubit, and Agilent Bioanalyzer
3. Biochemistry and Analytical Core for automated and customized ELISA and RIA measurements
4. Histology Core,

In addition, each faculty has its own cell culture suite, and mouse and rat phenotyping equipment including two telemetric blood pressure DSI systems, with capacity for 32 simultaneous recordings or 64 alternates. There are common equipment rooms for freezers, freeze driers, RT-PCR machines, ultracentrifuges, regular centrifuges etc. All laboratories are located on the first and third floor of the IBio building in downtown Detroit.

The HVR division has 10 full-time senior staff faculty (Pamela Harding Ph.D., Mariela Mendez Ph.D., Emilio Mottillo Ph.D., Pablo Ortiz Ph.D., Suresh Palaniyandi Ph.D., Tengis Pavlov Ph.D., N.-E. Rhaleb, and Gustavo Ares Ph.D., Paulo Caceres Ph.D., Sumit Monu DVM, Ph.D.), 5 Research Instructors (Dipak Maskey Ph.D., Tim Bryson Ph.D, Jiang Xu, M.D., Hongmei Peng, M.D, Hong Wang, M.D., Ph.D.), 20 fellows/graduate students and 9 technical staff. Thus, the division has approximately 50 investigators, and therefore critical mass. The members of HVRD participate in the research and educational activities of the Nephrology and Hypertension, and Cardiology Divisions of the Department of Internal Medicine. Because these latter divisions are primarily concerned with clinical care, these interactions provide potential development of translational projects.

Two administrative staff (Cameron Holden and Ashanti Alvarez) provide secretarial, grant management and personnel oversight for the entire division, while institute wide oversight for research and grant management is provided by the Department of Research Administration (OVPR) at Wayne State University.

Affiliation with Wayne State University

As part of this CardioMetabolic Research initiative all faculty at HVRD have Full Time Affiliate (FTA) appointments in the School of Medicine of WSU. All HVRD faculty have appointments in the Department of Physiology and contribute to the academic mission by training graduate, undergraduate and Master’s students from the Department of Physiology, and most faculty contribute (voluntary) teaching time in their respective areas of expertise.

Affiliation with Michigan State University

As part of the Henry Ford Health and Michigan State University Research initiative all faculty at HVRD are eligible for adjunct appointments in the School of Medicine or basic departments at MSU. By the end of 2025, it is expected that all HVRD faculty will have appointments at MSU and will contribute to the academic mission by training graduate students from MSU and contribute (voluntary) teaching time in their respective areas of expertise.