Hayek Lab University of Texas Medical Branch

What we do

Inflammation is the thread.

Our work starts from a clinical problem, finds the molecule that predicts it, works out why that molecule matters, and puts the result back in front of the clinician. Two programs carry that method into the settings where risk is highest.

01

Inflammation and Cardiovascular-Kidney-Metabolic Disease

The heart, the kidney, and metabolism fail together, and inflammation is the common thread. We study the immune signals that carry injury from one organ to another, and we translate them into biomarkers clinicians can act on.

Our defining contribution is suPAR, the soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor. Over a decade we established it as an independent predictor of incident chronic kidney disease, traced its mechanism to a tripartite complex with APOL1 risk variants and αvβ3 integrin on podocytes, extended it to acute kidney injury, and showed it modulates monocyte function to promote atherosclerosis. That arc now frames suPAR as a compartmentalized signaling system in cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome: membrane uPAR drives local inflammation and remodeling, while soluble suPAR mediates injury in distant organs.

Lines of work

  • suPAR and the kidney: incident CKD, eGFR decline, AKI, and FSGS
  • Mechanism: APOL1, αvβ3 integrin, monocyte priming, uPAR isoforms
  • Atherosclerosis, heart failure, and the cardiorenal axis
  • Inflammation and outcomes in COVID-19 and critical illness
  • Genetics of suPAR and multi-omics integration
Three-panel schematic. Dysregulated innate immunity raises circulating suPAR and its D2D3 fragment. Panel A, kidney: suPAR and D2D3 engage integrins on podocytes and tubular epithelial cells, causing podocyte injury, loss of filtration integrity and proteinuria, raising the risk of chronic kidney disease and acute kidney injury. Panel B, pancreas: D2D3 acts on beta cells, impairing glucose-stimulated insulin secretion and reducing beta cell mass, leading to insulin-dependent diabetes. Panel C, cardiovascular system: suPAR primes monocytes for a proinflammatory, atherogenic profile, driving plaque formation, vascular dysfunction and progression of cardiovascular disease.
Figure 3 One circulating protein, three organ systems. Dysregulated innate immunity raises suPAR and its D2D3 fragment, which act on the kidney, the pancreatic beta cell, and the vasculature through distinct receptors and distinct injury pathways. Reproduced from Reiser J, Hayek SS, Sever S. J Clin Invest. 2026;136(1):e197141, under CC BY 4.0. Select the figure for full resolution.

Papers by topic

  • 61 COVID-19 & Critical Illness
  • 50 suPAR & Inflammatory Biomarkers
  • 49 Vascular Biology, Atherosclerosis & Prevention
  • 35 Nephrology & Cardiorenal
  • 14 Heart Failure & Cardiomyopathy
  • 11 Basic & Mechanistic Science

A paper can count under more than one topic.

02

Cardio-Oncology

Cancer therapy saves lives and injures hearts. We work out which patients are at risk, how to detect that injury early, and how to treat it without taking effective cancer therapy away.

This is now the lab's largest program. Immune-checkpoint-inhibitor myocarditis is the flagship: registry-based diagnosis and prognosis, troponin and ECG predictors, severity scoring, and the thymus biology underlying susceptibility. Alongside it we study anthracycline cardiotoxicity, CAR T-cell cytokine-release cardiomyopathy, and the cardiovascular care of patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, where post-transplant atrial fibrillation turns out to be a sentinel of systemic vulnerability rather than a transient nuisance.

Lines of work

  • Immune-checkpoint-inhibitor myocarditis: diagnosis, biomarkers, outcomes
  • Anthracycline cardiotoxicity and cardioprotection
  • CAR T-cell and cellular-therapy cardiotoxicity
  • Cardiovascular care in stem cell transplantation
  • Biomarkers in cancer survivors
  • Building the cardio-oncology workforce
Horizontal bar chart ranking predictors of cardiovascular events after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation by variable importance. In decreasing order: anthracycline use, coronary artery disease, transplant type, age, left ventricular ejection fraction of 50 percent or below, race, creatinine, heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease, body mass index, hypertension, triglycerides, and peripheral artery disease.
Figure 1 What actually predicts cardiovascular events after stem cell transplantation, ranked across 3,354 adults in the CARE-BMT registry. Anthracycline exposure, coronary artery disease and transplant type outrank most traditional cardiovascular risk factors. Reproduced from Vasbinder A, et al. J Am Heart Assoc. 2024;13(3):e033599, under CC BY-NC 4.0. Select the figure for full resolution.

How we work

Cohorts and biospecimens on one side, mechanism on the other.

Methods

  • Clinical cohort and registry studies
  • Biomarker discovery and validation
  • Biostatistics and machine learning
  • Multi-omics integration
  • Mechanistic and translational models
  • Health systems and implementation science

Cohorts and registries

  • Emory Cardiovascular Biobank
  • CRIC
  • MESA
  • BARI 2D
  • International ICI-Myocarditis Registry
  • CARE-BMT
  • Mi-CARD
  • STOP-COVID
  • Michigan Medicine COVID-19 Cohort (M2C2)
  • ISIC
  • AHA COVID-19 CVD Registry
  • UK Biobank

100,000+ biospecimens assayed across the lab's cohorts and registries.

Browse all 225 publications

Who makes it possible

Funding and collaborators.

Funding support

Federal
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, NIH
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, NIH
Institutional
  • University of Texas Medical Branch
  • Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research
  • Frankel Cardiovascular Center, University of Michigan
  • Michigan Alzheimer's Disease Center
Industry
  • Gilead Sciences

Collaborating institutions

  • Emory University
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Washington
  • University of Houston
  • Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Oregon Health & Science University
  • UPMC Sorbonne Universités

The work spans cardiology, oncology, nephrology, immunology, and data science, and almost none of it is done alone.