Course The Cardiovascular Research Tool Box: From lab to clinical trial

The course C332/01 The Cardiovascular Research Tool Box: From lab to clinical trial is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2025.

Criteria for participation:  University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or Master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Requirements for participation: Participants need to bring their own laptop computer.

Aim: The course aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the methodologies used across the cardiovascular research disciplines. The course will teach critical aspects of designing, conducting, and interpreting cardiovascular research within basic, epidemiological, and clinical research.

Learning outcomes: 

• The students should be able to reflect and discuss the critical aspects in designing and interpreting basic, epidemiological, and clinical studies within cardiovascular research.
• The students should get an overview of pre-clinical models for investigating cardiovascular disease, an overview of epidemiological research platforms, and clinical trial governance.
• The students should learn critical appraisal of scientific texts within basic, epidemiological and clinical cardiovascular research
• The students will gain knowledge and experience for conduct their own cardiovascular studies, and the course will provide an overview of available consulting services at the University.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 50 hours, including preparatory pre class-activities, in-class activities and post-class activities.

Content:

Pre-class activities: Participants need to prepare a 3 minute ‘pitch’ of their own research project and read course-relevant background literature.

Day 1 - Pre-clinical and basic cardiovascular research

This day provides insights into conducting basic/pre-clinical research that uncovers molecular mechanisms in cardiovascular development and diseases, with a special emphasis on the generation and use of animal and cell models, as well as their advantages and pitfalls. Course elements on this day include lectures/seminars and a Crispr/Cas9 workshop that includes a hands-on exercise to design their own guide RNA. Participants also present their project and research in a ‘pitch’ session to their peers, followed by a networking event.

Day 2 - Epidemiology

This part of the course focuses on the principles and concepts of epidemiology, the research platforms available, study designs, concepts of confounding and bias, along with association versus causation. Students will participate in an exercise to work with research databases and platforms. Participants will also perform group-work to research a specific cardiovascular disease and present findings to their peers.

Day 3 - Clinical research and trials

Day 3 will provide insights on clinical research and clinical trials, including principles of clinical research, designing and organization of clinical trials, ethical considerations and frameworks. This day will also feature a keynote lecture and expert roundtable: the leader of a project that successfully bridged the gap between bench and bedside will outline their journey from basic research discover to running a clinical trial. Participants will be able to ask questions in a Q&A roundtable session following the keynote lecture.

Post-class activities: Participants need to submit a background section on their cardiovascular research project (2-6 pages, excluding references), which will be reviewed by experts in the field and commented on. The background section may be used as a basis for the participants introduction and background section for their thesis.

Instructors:

• Stephan Lange, course leader and instructor
• Kasper Korsholm, course leader and instructor
• Morten Schmidt, course coordinator and instructor

The course will also feature a selection of national and international experts in their field as instructors and lecturers.

Venues: Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 24 March 2025 09:00 - 16:00
• 25 March 2025 09:00 - 16:00
• 26 March 2025 09:00 - 16:00