November 5, 2008

Outstanding researchers in cardiovascular medicine will be honored in The Johns Hopkins Hospital Houck Lobby at 4 p.m., Wednesday, Nov.5, as part of the Johns Hopkins Heart and Vascular Institute’s annual awards ceremony named to commemorate the late Hopkins physician Stanley L. Blumenthal, B.A. ’39 and M.D. ’43.

Three postdoctoral research fellows will each receive a $1,000 cash prize with a commemorative plaque. The award categories are for basic science (the biology behind cardiovascular disease), translational medicine (how best to apply new discoveries to patient care), and clinical science (how best to improve existing therapies).

“These awards highlight a tradition of excellence at Johns Hopkins, and especially, in the organization’s commitment to cardiovascular research,” says cardiologist Roger S. Blumenthal, M.D., Stanley’s son, also a graduate of Hopkins (B.A. ’81), a professor and director of the Ciccarone Preventive Cardiology Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “My late father would be proud to know that such high achievement is being recognized in his honor.”

Recipients of the 2008 Blumenthal awards are:

• Mikhail Maslov, M.D. (Basic Science Prize), for finding evidence to prove the long-held suspicion that failing hearts are indeed “energy-starved” and that boosting the gene activity for creatine kinase, the prime energy reserve in the heart, corrected the energy deficit and restored heart pumping function.

• Michael Bonios, M.D. (Translational Science Prize), for a study that tracked stem cells injected into damaged hearts in mice, showing that these transplants were being washed away in the blood to the lungs, a work that possibly explains why initial tests of stem cell therapies have proved disappointing at existing test doses.

• Juan Rivera, M.D. (Clinical Science Prize), for research using the latest 64-CT imaging techniques to tie cardiovascular disease risk factors such as smoking, gender and age to different kinds of plaque in narrowed blood vessels. A better understanding of the biology behind plaque formations, the researcher says, could offer better tests for assessing the real risk of heart attack from blocked arteries.