Nicola Smart

Following postdoctoral research at King’s College London and the UCL-Institute of Child Health, I was awarded a British Heart Foundation (BHF) Intermediate Basic Science Research Fellowship to investigate coronary vessel development and regeneration. Studies of the embryonic heart, including the identification of cardiovascular progenitors, are instructive towards understanding how to manipulate a regenerative response in the adult and this paradigm is the underlying basis of my research. Specifically, our work has revealed the potential to reactivate dormant adult epicardial cells to unleash a source of cardiac progenitors for repair of the injured heart. Similarly, from our studies on embryonic vascular development, novel insights have emerged into mechanisms that serve to maintain vessel stability throughout adult life. After joining DPAG in 2012, I was awarded a BHF Senior Basic Science Research Fellowship and selected to receive funds raised by the Fleming family to support the BHF in marking the centenary of the James Bond creator, Ian Fleming. I was awarded the inaugural BHF Research Fellow of the Year in 2011, the British Cardiovascular Society’s Michael Davies Early Career Award in 2012 and the British Atherosclerosis Society (BAS) John French Lecture in 2021. I became Honorary Secretary of the BAS in 2024, and am Director of the recently launched BHF VascularRewind DPhil programme, a consortium including the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.