Mark John Ranek, Ph.D.

Mark J. Ranek, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. He received his B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Mount Marty College in 2006 and earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Basic Biomedical Sciences at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine in 2012. He completed his post-doctoral fellowship in the Division of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins in 2018 at which time he was asked to join the faculty. Dr. Ranek has received federal funding for his research during his pre- and post-doctoral studies and now as an independent investigator. Among his numerous honors received are the 2016 Melvin L. Marcus Award Finalist from the American Heart Association and chosen as the Top 10% of accepted abstracts from Basic Cardiovascular Sciences in 2013.

Dr. Ranek's current research interests in the Institute of CardioScience at Johns Hopkins University aim to develop new and more effective treatments for various forms of cardiovascular disease. In particular, Dr. Ranek has focused on the role of proteostasis (protein homeostasis) during cardiac disease pathogenesis towards heart failure. In response to a cardiac stress there is an increased demand placed on the heart, which often manifests as protein misfolding, mutation, oxidation, and/or damage. These proteins must be promptly removed to avoid protein aggregation and a further deterioration of cardiac function. Dr. Ranek's research has uncovered pathways that are perturbed following a cardiac stress, causing impaired or insufficient proteostasis. He is also interested in developing novel therapeutic strategies to improve cardiac proteostasis, thereby function.