Svati H. Shah, MD, was a cardiology fellow at Duke in the early 2000s when a realization began to haunt her: Young men and women in their 20s and 30s were arriving in the cardiac unit with heart attacks that seemed to defy explanation. "Some seemingly healthy people developed heart disease," she said, "while others did not." Shah could not stop asking why. That question — quiet and persistent — would shape the next three decades of her career, and in ways she couldn't predict then, help reshape what cardiology itself is becoming.

The Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) is now assuming a greater role in national efforts to deliver effective, personalized therapies to patients more broadly and rapidly. The institute now serves as the Clinical Data Coordinating Center for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored Accelerating Medicines Partnership® Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (AMP® BGTC) clinical trials. The role was announced at the AMP BGTC session during the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Annual Meeting in May 2026.

ARPA-H award supports nationwide effort to build next-generation artificial intelligence tools designed to enable an integrated, holistic cardiovascular care platform that provides real-time guidance that patients and care teams can act on.

Faculty and teams from the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI) contributed to a broad range of scientific and educational sessions at the 2026 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress, held Aug. 28-31 in Munich. Their work was featured across presentations, guideline discussions, chair and discussant roles, and several of the congress's highly anticipated Hot Line studies.