Page 17 - CBAC Newsletter 2013

CBAC: What are some of the most important things you have learned since being in St. Louis?

I have learned what it truly means to be an adult, parent, and professionally, a physician-scientist.

CBAC: What is your most important research achievement?

My most important research achievement is identifying the Hedgehog signaling pathway as an essential regulator of
coronary development and adult microvascular homeostasis. In the absence of these signals the coronary vascular
system does not develop. Depletion of Hedgehog signaling in the adult leads to myocardial microvascular loss, heart
failure and subsequent mortality. In contrast, activation of this signaling pathway is sufficient to grow new coronary
vasculature implicating this signaling system as a potential therapeutic target for patients with heart failure.

CBAC: Future goals?

My immediate goals are to develop a research program focused on understanding the mechanisms by which the
heart recovers from injury. We have taken two approaches towards this important problem. First, we have developed a
mouse model that allows one to interrogate differences in how the heart responds and recovers from injury throughout
development and during adulthood. Using this system, we have learned that the embryonic and neonatal heart have
a remarkable ability to recover from injury while the adult heart has a limited capacity to recover. We hope to uncover
some of the molecular mechanisms that are responsible for cardiac recovery during development and test whether it
is possible to reactivate these pathways to improve the ability of the adult heart to recover from injury. Initial studies
have uncovered surprising differences between how the developing and adult immune systems interact with the in-
jured heart.

Second, we have continued to investigate signaling pathways that govern coronary development and adult coronary
growth. We will determine whether improving myocardial perfusion on the microvascular and macrovascular levels
could serve as a novel therapeutic strategy for treating patients with heart failure.

CBAC: What does the CBAC mean to you?

The CBAC represents an outstanding multidisciplinary forum focused on arrhythmias and related diseases. Interacting
with CBAC faculty/fellows and attending seminars has helped me to appreciate how some of the signaling mechanisms
that I study in the context of heart failure influence the development of lethal ventricular arrhythmias. These interac-
tions will undoubtedly lead to important future collaborations.
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