KALAMAZOO (WKZO) — An engineering professor at WMU he has just won a grant from the National Institutes of health to continue pioneering research on a discovery that could lead to the prevention of many heart attacks.
Dr. James Springstead has been studying what happens in the arteries that leads to blockages caused by LDL, the bad cholesterol.
He says he may have discovered a substance that can keep the LDL’s from clinging and accumulating along artery walls.
The $418-thousand N.I.H. grant will help him continue that research and perhaps come up with a drug that can prevent the underlying causes that lead to heart attacks.
Springstead has also bought a significant amount of surplus equipment, much of it from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, refurbished it and added it to his lab to carry out experiments.
“The medical school is already connected with industry and hospitals,” he says. “By starting off on the right foot, by starting off with engineering and medicine with a nice bridge between them, I think we can have something really special here and really unique.”
