Prof. Jang Ki-yuk of the cardiovascular department at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital has been selected as the only researcher in the applied medical sciences field for the Ministry of Science and ICT’s “Basic Research Program Leader Researcher” initiative.
Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital said on May 28 that Jang was chosen for the ministry’s 2026 Leader Researcher Program (Type A).
The program provides long-term support over nine years to world-class researchers in science and engineering fields. It is regarded as one of South Korea’s most prestigious basic research funding programs and has continued for nearly three decades since its launch in 1997.
Among the 18 researchers selected this year, Jang was the only one from the applied medicine field. As a Type A researcher, he will receive up to $580,000 annually for nine years, totaling about $5.2 million in research funding.
Jang’s research project is titled “Next-Generation Therapeutic Strategies for Refractory Cardiovascular Diseases Based on Induced Regression of Atherosclerotic Plaques.”
Atherosclerotic plaques are lesions formed by the buildup of fat and inflammatory cells within blood vessel walls and are known to be a major cause of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, including acute myocardial infarction and stroke.
According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, claiming about 18 million lives each year. A significant portion of those deaths are linked to acute vascular events caused by ruptured unstable plaques.
Jang’s team aims to establish a new treatment paradigm for difficult-to-treat cardiovascular diseases by going beyond conventional plaque stabilization and instead selectively inducing regression of the plaques themselves.
The hospital said Jang has led key research in the field of cardiovascular interventions through nearly 30 years of clinical experience.
In 2021, he published the results of the TALOS-AMI study — South Korea’s largest comparative antiplatelet therapy trial for acute myocardial infarction patients, involving 35 university hospitals and more than 3,300 patients nationwide — in The Lancet.
The study demonstrated that a stepwise de-escalation strategy for antiplatelet therapy following stent procedures for acute myocardial infarction significantly reduced bleeding risk, influencing international clinical guidelines, according to the hospital.
In 2022, Jang also collaborated with researchers at the Catholic University College of Medicine to identify, for the first time, a macrophage population expressing the Trem2 gene that suppresses progression to heart failure after myocardial infarction. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
“Until now, treatment for cardiovascular disease has focused on stabilizing plaques or relieving narrowed blood vessels,” Jang said. “This research is meaningful because it approaches the disease from the perspective of selectively removing the plaques themselves.”
“Drawing on research experience gained at the intersection of basic science and clinical practice, we will do our utmost to develop treatment strategies that can be applied to actual patients,” he added.
Separately, a research team led by Prof. Min Jin-soo of the pulmonology department at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital recently won a policy research project commissioned by the Korea National Institute of Health under the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency for an “asymptomatic tuberculosis cohort study.”
Under the approximately $570,000 project, Min’s team plans to establish a prospective multicenter cohort network in South Korea through 2028.