Two reasons make research in the area of cardiovascular diseases a must at the IRCM. First, it remains the major cause of death in western societies in spite of the development of excellent pharmacotherapies and secondly, it has been historically the strongest and most visible research effort of the IRCM with world-renowned researdh programs in hypertension and hypelipidemia. The work that is done by the scientists and clinician-scientists ranges from classical investigations on the consequences of hypertension and the genetic predisposition to heart diseases to the regulation of proprotein convertases in lipid metabolism and hypercholesterolemia. In recent years, the research program in this axis has also been extended to metabolic diseases such as diabetes and nutritional disorders.