Prof Ascione has a long-standing interest in developing new cardiovascular treatments based on regenerative medicine and tissue engineering technologies to help patients with heart attack/myocardial infarction (MI) or heart failure. To enhance this process, he founded and is Director of the Translational Biomedical Research Centre-TBRC at the University of Bristol, a preclinical facility operated at GLPMA standards where new treatments can be tested, securing £6.5M in funding from MRC, BHF and University of Bristol. 

In this area, Prof Ascione has led the first UK-based pilot trials in the NHS to test autologous bone marrow derived cells in patients with acute or chronic MI undergoing cardiac surgery. He is Theme Lead of the BHF Centre for Vascular Regeneration for 2017-21 https://www.ed.ac.uk/cardiovascular-science/research/cvs-bhf-centres/bhf-cvr/people) and has overseen the testing at TBRC of human peripheral blood CD16⁺ monocytes in an advanced preclinical model of closed chest heart attack with collagues from King College London and Edinburgh. In addition, with colleagues from Edinburgh, Oxford and KCL he has recently secured a 3-year extension of the BHF Centre, with one of the key aims being to provide proof-of-principle that gene-transfer mediated cardiac lymphangiogenesis can reduce heart scarring, remodelling and improve heart function in the same preclinical model of heart attack  he will be leading at TBRC. Prof Ascione is also leading an ongoing preclinical trial aimed at testing a new drug able to trigger neo-angiogenesis in the infarcted heart and improve heart function in collaboration with colleagues in Edinburgh and Astrazeneca.