The American Heart Association announced the launch of a groundbreaking research network involving 14 medical centers and a coordinating center to fundamentally transform heart transplant care in the United States. This initiative, the Association's first-ever heart transplant research network, aims to address long-standing gaps in innovation, equity, and patient outcomes. According to the American Heart Association’s 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, approximately 4,500 heart transplantations were performed in the U.S., yet more than 3,700 people remained on the waiting list in 2025.
“Despite decades of breakthrough advances in cardiovascular medicine, the system supporting heart transplantation has remained largely unchanged. Today, transplant recipients still face serious challenges, including difficulty detecting heart rejection early, reliance on immunosuppressive therapies that have seen little advancement over the past 20 years and inconsistent outcomes, especially among Black patients and children,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., FAHA, the chief science and medical officer of the American Heart Association. “This is one of the most high-stakes areas in medicine, yet innovation has lagged far behind. The American Heart Association has an urgent opportunity and responsibility to rethink care for heart transplant patients.”
Currently, heart transplant care is hindered by fragmented data systems, limited research investment, and a lack of standardized quality improvement efforts. Many clinical guidelines are based on expert consensus rather than robust evidence. The new initiative aims to change that by fostering collaboration across institutions, generating actionable data, and ensuring equitable advances. The multi-phase initiative focuses on three key pillars: a global heart transplant data infrastructure, a research network for breakthrough science, and a coordinated path forward.
The data infrastructure, developed in collaboration with leading transplant organizations, will be a dynamic, harmonized platform enabling real-time insights for research, quality improvement, and policy. The research network will focus on critical areas such as earlier detection of transplant rejection, remote monitoring technologies, viral surveillance, and safer therapies. The network will also support planning grants to accelerate clinical trials into immune tolerance and chronic rejection. Modeled after the Association’s Get With The Guidelines success, a scalable quality improvement framework will standardize care and improve long-term outcomes.
The four-year research grants begin July 1, 2026. The coordinating center is led by Emilia Bagiella, Ph.D., at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Other centers include Baylor College of Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Columbia University, Duke University School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Medical University of South Carolina, Stanford University, University of California San Diego, University of Colorado Denver, University of Pennsylvania, University of Utah, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
“By bringing together this exceptional data, research and clinical expertise, the Heart Association can help accelerate discoveries and translate them into better care for every patient, no matter who they are or where they live,” Jessup said. The American Heart Association has funded more than $6.1 billion in cardiovascular research since 1949. More information about the initiative is available on heart.org.
