The Institute for Cardiovascular Research of the Vrije Universiteit (ICaR-VU) was founded in 1992 on basis of the Dutch University Education Act (WWO) of 1986. The purpose of the research school is education of graduate students (PhD-students) in all aspects of cardiovascular function and cardiovascular diseases.
One of the main tasks of the ICaR-VU is to stimulate and promote interdisciplinary research to be able to cover the range ‘from patient to gene’. Therefore the research is oriented towards a limited number of cardiovascular diseases. This choice leads to a much better and more coherent research, does away with the boundaries between clinical and preclinical departments, and stimulates multidisciplinary research. Thus, it was decided that, as of January 1 1997 the Institute would concentrate on the two themes given below.
Theme H Improvement of Cardiac Function in Heart
Failure
Theme V Improvement of Vascular Function in Metabolic
Diseases