UTICA - Seventy-five cents of every $1 raised at America's Greatest Heart Run and Walk this weekend will stay in the area, American Heart Association officials say.

Matt Bannister, senior vice president of health strategies, said the majority of funding goes toward research or for funding research. The remaining 25 cents goes to the national center in Dallas, Texas, and is pooled with money raised for the Heart Association from across the country to support research grants. Money raised at this year's Heart Run & Walk will go toward grants that will be awarded to research facilities next fiscal year, July 1 to June 30, Bannister said.

But the amount of money raised by Utica's Heart Run doesn't necessarily speak for how much money is spent here for research.

"While the Utica area will raise approximately $1.1 million, we spend a little over $3.5 million in research in the Utica area alone," Bannister said. "So in Utica, you get back far more than you give back to the national pool."

Between Utica, Syracuse and Albany, there are 19 research projects being funded by the Heart Association, he said.

Some of the projects funded are happening at Masonic Medical Research Laboratories. Examples, said Masonic Labs director of development and communications Ron Kamp:

A three-year grant recently completed for $180,000 held by Dr. Jeffrey Fish for creating models of sudden death that affect young adults as well as drugs that treat Brugada Syndrome, a genetic disease.

A grant for $180,000, now in the last year, is held by Dr. Fabiana Scornik, who is studying sodium and potassium channels of the heart as well as how the heart is regulated by the autonomic nervous system.

The laboratory has made cardiac arrhythmias, ischemic heart disease and sudden cardiac death its primary focus. Cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heart beats, claim more lives than any other mechanism of heart disease, from infants to adults, Kamp said. And Masonic Labs has been credited for discovering and unraveling the mechanism of known cardiac arrhythmias, he said.

"People don't realize that the cause of the heart attack is what causes death, not the heart attack," Kamp said. Work at Masonic Labs also aided in the advancement of the pacemaker and automated external defibrillator, he said.