The American Heart Association, Verily and AstraZeneca announced the opening of the One Brave Idea Science Innovation Center in Boston, where investigators are collaborating to identify early markers for CHD.

One Brave Idea is a $75 million research enterprise with the goal of ending CHD and its consequences. The center is home to Calum MacRae, MD, PhD, chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Cardiovascular Medicine Innovation team, according to a press release.

MacRae and colleagues are aiming to devise a CHD “early warning system” by discerning what happens in the 10 to 20 years before risk factors usually appear, according to the release.

“Facilitating collaboration among scientists is a cornerstone strategy for the American Heart Association and this team of multidisciplinary scientists aims to understand the earliest stages of the disease, figure out how it develops to prevent it from ever leading to heart attack and stroke,” Nancy Brown, CEO of the AHA, said in the release. “Through Verily’s informatic capabilities, AstraZeneca’s proprietary data and our evolving ecosystem of patient-centered research and scientific networks, the One Brave Idea research team will translate their findings into new prevention and treatment strategies.”

The new center is positioned with access to leading hospitals, engineering expertise from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital phenotyping center, according to the release.

“Creating multidisciplinary research teams to attack a problem from many angles is a model we believe will ultimately have a significant impact on cardiovascular health,” MacRae said in the release.

Disclosure: Brown is an employee of the AHA. MacRae reports no relevant financial disclosures.