Research in the Anderson laboratory focuses on cellular signaling and ionic mechanisms that cau...se heart failure, arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, major public health problems worldwide. Primary focus is on the multifunctional Ca2+ and calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII). The laboratory identified CaMKII as an important pro-arrhythmic and pro-cardiomyopathic signal, and its studies have provided proof of concept evidence motivating active efforts in biotech and the pharmaceutical industry to develop therapeutic CaMKII inhibitory drugs to treat heart failure and arrhythmias.

Under physiological conditions, CaMKII is important for excitation-contraction coupling and fight or flight increases in heart rate. However, myocardial CaMKII is excessively activated during disease conditions where it contributes to loss of intracellular Ca2+ homeostasis, membrane hyperexcitability, premature cell death, and hypertrophic and inflammatory transcription. These downstream targets appear to contribute coordinately and decisively to heart failure and arrhythmias. Recently, researchers developed evidence that CaMKII also participates in asthma.

Efforts at the laboratory, funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, are highly collaborative and involve undergraduate assistants, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty. Key areas of focus are:
• Ion channel biology and arrhythmias
• Cardiac pacemaker physiology and disease
• Molecular physiology of CaMKII
• Myocardial and mitochondrial metabolism
• CaMKII and reactive oxygen species in asthma

Mark Anderson, MD, is the William Osler Professor of Medicine, the director of the Department of Medicine in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and physician-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. view more

The Arking Lab studies the genomics of complex human disease, with the primary goal of identify...ing and characterizing genetics variants that modify risk for human disease. The group has pioneered the use of genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which allow for an unbiased screen of virtually all common genetic variants in the genome. The lab is currently developing improved GWAS methodology, as well as exploring the integration of additional genome level data (RNA expression, DNA methylation, protein expression) to improve the power to identify specific genetic influences of disease.

The Arking Lab is actively involved in researching:
• autism, a childhood neuropsychiatric disorder
• cardiovascular genomics, with a focus on electrophysiology and sudden cardiac death (SCD)
• electrophysiology is the study of the flow of ions in biological tissues

Dan E. Arking, PhD, is an associate professor at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Johns Hopkins University. view more

The Weiss Lab, which features a multi-disciplinary team at Johns Hopkins as well as at Cedars S...inai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is dedicated to identifying the most important clinical, genetic, structural, contractile and metabolic causes of sudden cardiac death as well as the means to reverse the underlying pathology and lower risk.

Current projects include research into energy metabolism in human heart failure and creatine kinase metabolism in animal models of heart failure.

Robert G. Weiss, MD, is professor of medicine, Radiology and Radiological Science, at the Johns Hopkins University. view more

Dr. Wu leads a multi-disciplinary team with collaborators from the Bloomberg School of Public H...ealth, JHU Whiting School of Engineering, and JHU Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. She conducts ongoing investigations with the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study and Women’s Inter-agency Health Study. Her lab’s goals are to develop, implement, and validate novel imaging-based metrics of cardiac structure and function to improve risk prediction and stratification at the individual patient-level.

Research Focuses:

Predictors of Sudden Cardiac Death by Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Subclinical myocardial disease in people living with HIV
Individualized risk prediction
Cardiac structural and mechanical modeling view more