Understanding and Managing Variable Drug Actions: From the ECG to Population Genomics

September 30, 2020, 2:30 pm -3:30 pm
Join guest speaker, Dan Roden, M.D.C.M., as we explore his research in variable drug actions.

Speaker Bio

Dan Roden, M.D.C.M., was born and raised in Montreal, and received his medical degree and training in Internal Medicine from McGill University. He then went to Vanderbilt where he trained in Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiology, and has been a faculty member there since. His initial career focus – that he has maintained – was studies of the clinical, genetic, cellular, and molecular basis of arrhythmia susceptibility and variability responses to arrhythmia therapies. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Roden has led Vanderbilt’s broader efforts in pharmacogenomics discovery and implementation.

He is principal investigator for the Vanderbilt sites of the National Institutes of Health’s Pharmacogenomics Research Network (PGRN) and the National Human Genome Research Institute’s Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. He directs the Vanderbilt DNA databank BioVU, a discovery resource that as of spring 2014 included >175,000 samples linked to de-identified electronic medical records. He is a leader in Vanderbilt’s PREDICT project that since 2010 has been preemptively embedded pharmacogenomic variant data in the electronic medical records of >14,000 Vanderbilt patients; as of April 2013, PREDICT displays information on 5 drug-gene pairs and delivers point of care decision support when a target drug is prescribed to patients with variant genotypes.

Dr. Roden has received the Leon Goldberg Young Investigator Award and the Rawls Palmer Progress in Science Award from the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics; the Distinguished Scientist Award and the Douglas Zipes lectureship from the Heart Rhythm Society; and the Distinguished Scientist Award and the Functional Genomics and Translational Biology Medal of Honor from the American Heart Association. He currently serves on the Science Board of the FDA. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians, and fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Target Mitochondria for Heart Failure Therapy

Wednesday, October 28, 2020, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join guest speaker, Rong Tian, M.D., Ph.D., as we explore her research in targeting the mitochondria in heart failure therapy.

Speaker Bio
Rong Tian, M.D., Ph.D., obtained her medical degree from West China University of Medical Sciences and her Ph.D. in pharmacology from Aarhus University in Denmark. She is currently the professor and director of the interdisciplinary Mitochondria and Metabolism Center at the University of Washington. Her work is recognized in three inter-related areas of cardiovascular diseases: bioenergetics, metabolism, and mitochondrial biology.

Dr. Tian's laboratory has made contributions to the field of cardiovascular medicine by combining in vivo metabolic phenotyping with multi-nuclear NMR spectroscopy, proteomics and metabolomics. Her research includes cardiac substrate metabolism, AMPK signaling cascade and mitochondrial function. Dr. Tian’s recent work on NAD metabolism, protein acetylation and mitochondrial sensitivity to stress has led to advancements in the translational research as heart failure becomes a predominant diagnosis in aging and obese populations. Dr. Tian has received several awards and honors including the Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Heart Association Basic Science Council and the Research Achievement Award of the International Society for Heart Research. In 2019, she was appointed as the editor in chief for the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.

Calcium and Arrhythmia – New Mechanisms and Treatments

November 11, 2020, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join guest speaker, Björn C. Knollmann, M.D., Ph.D., as we explore his latest research.

Speaker Bio

Björn Knollmann, M.D., Ph.D., is the principal investigator of the E-C Coupling and Arrhythmia Lab. Dr. Knollman joined the Vanderbilt Center for Arrhythmia Research and Therapeutics in 2005 after his professorship at Georgetown University. He is board-certified in internal medicine and clinical pharmacology. After completing residency training in internal medicine, a fellowship in clinical pharmacology and graduate training in pharmacology.
His research interest is finding new mechanisms and treatments for heart rhythm disorders. His laboratory and clinical research programs are supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH) R01 and American Heart Association (AHA) grants. Dr. Knollman's laboratory investigates molecular arrhythmia mechanisms involving alterations in the functioning of myofilaments and calcium release channels. His lab develops and tests new anti-arrhythmic therapies in animal models and in humans.
Bjorn Knollmann is also the associate editor of the classic textbook of pharmacology: Goodman & Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. He has served on the scientific programming committees for the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (ASCPT) and the AHA, and routinely reviews grant applications for NIH and AHA.

Myocardial Load Regulates Cardiomyocyte Growth Mode

November 18, 2020, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join guest speaker, Hesham Sadek M.D., Ph.D, as we explore his latest research.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Sadek obtained his medical degree from Ain Sham University in Cairo, Egypt, and received his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He completed clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at the University Hospitals of Cleveland and postdoctoral fellowship in cardiac regeneration at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Dr. Sadek's research focuses on mammalian heart regeneration and mechanisms of cardiomyocyte cell cycle regulation. He is currently a professor of internal medicine/cardiology, molecular biology and biophysics and the associate director of the Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he is the J. Fred Schoellkopf, Jr. Chair in Cardiology. Dr. Sadek's lab is funded by grants from NIH, AHA, CPRIT, CRSM and Fondation Leducq.

Where are the functional eQTLs that can explain complex human disease?

Wednesday, December 16, 2020, 1 pm - 2 PM
Join our guest speaker, Yoav Gilad, Ph.D., as we explore his latest research.

Speaker Bio
Dr. Yoav Gilad completed his B.Sc. in Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry from the Ben Gurion University in Israel in 1998, his Ph.D in Molecular and Population Genetics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in 2003, and his Post-doctoral fellowship (which was funded by EMBO) at Yale Medical School in 2005. In 2005, Dr. Gilad joined the faculty of the University of Chicago at the department of Human Genetics as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to a tenured Associate Professor in 2009, and to a Full Professor in 2013. From 2014 to 2018, Dr. Gilad served as Chair of the Committee on Genetics, Genomics, and Systems Biology, at University of Chicago. In 2016 Dr. Gilad was appointed a Professor of Medicine, the Chief of the section of Genetic Medicine, and the Vice Chair for Research at the Department of Medicine. In 2010, Dr. Gilad was also appointed as the Director of the Functional Genomics facility at the University of Chicago (a core facility that provides empirical and computational genomic services, including next generation sequencing, microarrays, and bioinformatics). In 2017, Dr. Gilad was appointed the Director of the Stem Cell Training facility at he the University of Chicago. Dr. Gilad is the recipient of multiple federal grants to study human disease and human evolution using cutting edge empirical and computational genomic techniques. His lab’s research focuses on understanding the genetics of complex phenotypes and the potential for Personalized Medicine by using Functional Genomics.

Hippo Pathway and Heart Disease

Wednesday, January 20, 2021, 1 pm -2 pm
Join guest speaker, Junichi Sadoshima, M.D., Ph.D., as we explore his latest research in heart disease.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Sadoshima graduated from Kyushu University School of Medicine in Fukuoka, Japan, and received his MD/PhD in 1990. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. His research focuses on autophagy, the Hippo pathway, and redox-sensitive signaling mechanisms. He received first prize for the AHA’s Katz Basic Science Research Prize (1995); first prize for the AHA Cardiovascular Research Prize (2001); the ISHR Janice Pfeffer Distinguished Lecture Award (2010); the AHA Thomas Smith Memorial Lecture Award (2014); the BCVS Distinguished Investigator Award (2017); the AHA Merit Award (2020). He is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation. He is an associate editors of Autophagy and 2 other journals, and an editorial board member of Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is a North American coordinator of the Leducq Transatlantic Network focusing on autophagy in the heart. He dedicates himself to the training of young scientists, and his trainees have received numerous awards, including the Katz Basic Research Prize awards (2008, 2013 and 2017) and Melvin L Marcus Young Investigator awards (2003 and 2013) from the AHA.

The Role of 3D Genome Organization in Cellular Identity

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join our guest speaker, Rajan Jain, M.D., as we explore his latest research.

Speaker Bio
Rajan Jain, M.D., is Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a graduate group affiliation with the Cell and Molecular Biology group. The Jain research lab is interested in how genome organization shapes organogenesis. Overall, their research seeks to understand how cell identity is established and maintained. Jain’s team combines traditional molecular biology and genetic tools with innovative imaging and next-generation sequencing approaches to define how an embryonic stem cell progressively restrict their potential to give rise to various differentiated cell types in the body. The Jain group routinely leverages classic models of stem cell biology to dissect the underpinnings of cell fate decisions. The lab has a focus on cardiac biology but routinely works outside it.

Pending Topic

February 17, 2021, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join guest speaker, Jennifer Van Eyk, Ph.D., as we explore her latest research.

Speaker Bio
Jennifer Van Eyk, PH.D., is a Professor of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and serves as the director of the Basic Science Research in the Barbra Streisand Woman’s Hearth Center. Dr. Van Eyk is also the director of the Advanced Clinical Biosystems Research Institute. Recently she has been appointed the co-director of the Cedars Sinai Precision Health, which focuses on in-hospital and population individualization of health care.

Dr. Van Eyk specializes in clinical proteomics and her lab is focused on developing technical pipelines for de novo discovery and larger scale quantitative mass spectrometry methods which includes multiple reaction monitoring (MRM, also known as SRM) and data independent acquisition.

The Intersection of Thrombosis and Immunity

Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 1 pm - 2 pm
Join guest speaker, Jane Freedman, M.D., as we explore her research in the intersection of thrombosis and immunity

Speaker Bio

Jane Freedman, M.D., is the Edward Budnitz Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at University of Massachusetts Medical School. She attends the Division of Cardiology and is the Director of Cardiovascular Research for the University of Massachusetts Memorial Heart and Vascular Center. Dr. Freedman is the editor-in-chief of the journal Circulation Research. Dr. Freedman completed her residency and cardiology fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, respectively. Dr. Freedman was granted full tenure at Georgetown University. She has also received young investigator awards from both the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC). She was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the AUC program at the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Freedman served as an Interim Director at the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute from 2007 to 2008 and was the Director of the NHLBI-sponsored Cardiovascular Research Training Grant at Boston University School of Medicine. She is an Associate Editor for Circulation Research and is on the editorial board and guest editor for several journals including: Circulation Research and Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. The major research initiatives in Dr. Freedman’s laboratory emphasize the regulation of pathways contributing to atherothrombotic disease and how these factors contribute to acute coronary syndromes.