Karen Patterson

Mariell Jessup: Shaping a Subspecialty

As a thought leader in heart failure diagnosis and management, Mariell Jessup, MD, has served in many roles that have impacted medical decision-making and patient care. Her publications have included clinical investigations of heart failure treatments,1,2 as well as a broad range of disease and practice insights3–5 and perspectives on leading-edge topics in the field.6–11 In the past decade, Jessup helped carve out recognition of advanced heart failure/transplant cardiology as an ABIM (American Board of Internal Medicine)–certified subspecialty.12 She also chaired the panel that wrote the 2009 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines update on managing heart failure,13 led the AHA’s Scientific Sessions program committee in 2009 and 2010, and served as AHA president in 2013–2014.14 Recently, she stepped down as the cochair of the American College of Cardiology/AHA prevention guidelines panel and chair of the AHA’s science and clinical education lifelong learning committee. Jessup, 66, earned her bachelor’s degree in biology at the University of Pennsylvania and her medical degree at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. She served her internship and residency at Hahnemann University Hospital and her fellowship in cardiovascular diseases at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Faculty positions followed at Hahnemann, Temple University and Penn, and on January 1, 2017, Jessup became Chief Scientific Officer of the international grant-making institution Fondation Leducq, which funds international cardiovascular and neurovascular research. During her education and early career, a few key mentors (one of them her future husband), along with a host of game-changing developments in heart failure care, laid for her a foundation of enthusiasm about the field that has fueled nearly 4 decades of advocacy. In looking back, Jessup says, “I’ve been so blessed to be able to watch how patients with …

Gerald W. Dorn II: Thinker, Teacher, Tinkerer

Cardiologist and molecular and cell biologist Gerald Dorn, MD, has built his research career crafting interesting questions and teaching himself techniques needed to find answers. Using approaches including genetic and physiological manipulation in animal models, development of mini-mouse technology to elucidate cardiac mysteries, and human genetics/genomics, Dorn is helping to unravel cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying cardiomyopathy and heart failure.1,2 Gerald W. Dorn II Dorn, 57, is founding director of the Center for Pharmacogenomics at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, where he joined the faculty in 2008. As a teenager Dorn sped through high school, starting college two years early. He earned his medical degree and trained in internal medicine, pharmacology, and clinical and interventional cardiology at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in Charleston, where two key mentors sparked in him a passion for patient care and research. After a couple of years at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Dorn moved to the University of Cincinnati, where an American Heart Association Established Investigator Award kick-started his research program. From 1990 to 2008 Dorn rose through the ranks at Cincinnati, capitalizing on the institution’s strength in mouse cardiac transgenesis. Dorn’s current interests include molecular mechanisms of cell death,3 microRNA regulation of cardiac genes,4 and mitochondrial dynamism5—work that has expanded to Parkinson’s disease. Building on an upbringing that valued lifelong growth, and drawing from his own broad experience, Dorn now leverages the holism of systems biology to fill in what he calls his field’s “infinitely large shades of gray.” My father was a career naval aviator. Whenever he moved, we moved. So I’m not really from anywhere. We spent a lot of time on both coasts. As a child I lived, in addition to …

Matthias Nahrendorf: Healing Insights.

Born in Salzwedel, East Germany, Matthias Nahrendorf entered adulthood just as the Iron Curtain was lifting in Eastern Europe. He earned his medical degree and PhD in cardiovascular biology at Heidelberg University, and completed his residency plus fellowships in internal medicine and cardiovascular imaging at University of Wuerzburg. In 2004, a postdoctoral position at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Molecular Imaging Research brought Nahrendorf to Boston. He is now a principal investigator at MGH’s Center for Systems Biology and director of the hospital’s Mouse Imaging Program. Nahrendorf, 45, is pursuing a deeper understanding of the consequences of ischemic injury, especially regarding how monocytes/macrophages impact acute healing and scar development,1–3 and how an imbalance in the process fuels prolonged inflammation and then heart failure. An associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, Nahrendorf and his collaborators are also developing molecular imaging tools to noninvasively study regulators of heart failure biology and infarct healing processes.4–6 A long-term goal of the work is to devise new therapies for ischemic injury that reduce the action of inflammatory cells to what is necessary only to promote healthy healing, Nahrendorf says. If that could be achieved, “Ideally we wouldn’t have heart failure anymore.” I have one brother, he’s younger, and my parents. It was a pretty sheltered childhood. I grew up in Magdeburg, and the (Berlin) Wall came down when I was 18. Army service was compulsory in East Germany. So I spent one year in the army and then Germany reunited, so I was free to go wherever I wanted. My parents are both doctors. My dad is a cardiologist, my mom a pediatrician. I had a happy childhood. They were never telling me what to do. But I was obviously influenced by their jobs. They talked about …

Walter J. Koch: Two Decades, One Mission

Temple University Professor and Chairman of Pharmacology Walter J. (“Wally”) Koch, PhD, has been on a career-long mission to elucidate molecular mechanisms of heart failure. Studying a family of kinases that regulate adrenergic receptors and other G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in the heart, Koch has focused on one such kinase, GRK2,1 which at high levels impairs myocytes and promotes cell death. Two decades of basic and preclinical work with GRK2 have put the 54-year-old Koch and his colleagues on the threshold of human trials using adeno-associated viral-mediated myocardial gene delivery to try to reverse heart failure.2–4 Koch has also shed new light on GRK5, including showing how this enzyme enters a heart cell’s nucleus, where it contributes to hypertrophy.5,6 Koch, a native of Bryan, Ohio, first pursued his interest in science by following a friend’s path to pharmacy school at the University of Toledo. Koch earned his PhD in pharmacology and cell biophysics from the University of Cincinnati, completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship at Duke University, joined the Duke faculty, and advanced to a tenured professor of surgery. In 2003 he moved to Philadelphia to launch Thomas Jefferson University’s Center for Translational Medicine, and in 2012 established the Center for Translational Medicine at Temple. In 1995, when Koch started his own lab, he knew he wanted to be the “champion” of GRK2 in the heart and develop GRK2 inhibitors for heart failure. “Twenty years later,” he says in describing his journey, “we’re almost there.” Walter J. Koch My father was a truck driver, a World War II veteran. He hauled steel between Cleveland and Chicago, so he was not home during the week. My mom stayed home. There were five kids; I’m the baby. I went to Catholic grade school and …

Gary H. Gibbons: A Career-Defining Question

Gary H. Gibbons, MD, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), has lived a “blessed life.” Molded by a hardscrabble family history, supported by exceptional mentors and educational opportunities, and propelled by an interest in all things science, Gibbons, 58, came of age in an era when new doors were opening to African Americans. In a journey that has taken him to Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham & Women’s Hospital—and faculty positions at Stanford University, Harvard, and Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, where he was founding director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute—Gibbons never lost sight of his desire to help people like those he grew up with, working-class African Americans in the inner-city Germantown section of his native Philadelphia. Gibbons, elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2007, has devoted his research career to probing the intricacies of blood pressure regulation, vascular remodeling, and disparities in the cardiovascular health of minorities. As NHLBI director since 2012, Gibbons oversees the third largest institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), with a budget of more than

Elizabeth McNally: A Muscular Approach

3 billion. Prodded to discuss his career achievements, Gibbons recounts something his mother always told him: Make sure your humility matches your ability. He says he leaves his significance to others to judge. Gary H. Gibbons (Photo courtesy of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.) I was the youngest of three, and my parents were schoolteachers. I grew up in an era in which I was part of a sort of vanguard cohort—some would call us the Joshua Generation—in which, growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, I was part of the first group of children who was bused as part of desegregation. That happened when I was in third grade, I believe, bused literally across the tracks to a …

Joshua M. Hare Converging on Cardiac Regeneration

Elizabeth McNally, MD, PhD, has spent three decades studying the genetics of heart and muscle disease. Her work has yielded new insights into the development and presentation of cardiomyopathy and muscular dystrophy. Dr McNally’s interests are rooted in her days as an undergraduate student at Barnard College. She earned her medical degree and doctorate in microbiology and immunology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She did her internship, residency and cardiovascular fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and genetics fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. Before joining Northwestern University last year, Dr McNally, a Chicago native, had been at the University of Chicago since 1996. Among her nearly 200 publications are studies on developing genetic profiling to identify mutations underlying cardiomyopathy, including a collaborative project associating a single mutation with a range of outcomes,1 and research demonstrating the utility of whole-genome sequencing to find individual mutations in cardiomyopathy patients,2 and of a supercomputer to facilitate whole-genome analysis.3 She has explored how molecular modifiers—focusing on the TGF-beta pathway—change disease outcomes, both in animal models4–6 of muscular dystrophy and cardiomyopathy, and in patients7 with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Recent work has proposed a novel approach8 to modulating this pathway. Other studies have identified a new modifier pathway mediating cell repair in striated muscle9 and elucidated the role of KATP channels in the neonatal heart’s shift to adult metabolism.10 In September, McNally became director of Northwestern’s Center for Genetic Medicine, with the goal of transforming how genetic information is used clinically. She plans to capitalize on advances in genetic sequencing, leverage the high heritability of cardiovascular and neurological disease, and navigate the dynamic genetics of cancer, to improve patient outcomes. I lived in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and really was not raised in a …

Steven Houser: The Beat Goes On

Heart failure and transplantation specialist Joshua Hare, MD, is at the forefront of cardiac stem cell therapy investigation. Although some people look at his CV and think that he is “all over the place,” Hare says, he has in fact bundled his varied research interests—including nitric oxide and oxidative stress, the aging cardiovascular system, genomics, and stem cells—into a cohesive trajectory aimed at understanding and repairing weakened or ischemically damaged hearts. After medical school, internship, and residency at Johns Hopkins University, Hare moved to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital for a cardiology fellowship in the early 1990s. In 1995, he returned to Hopkins, where he ultimately became the director of the heart transplant program. In the early 2000s, steered toward cell therapy by Hopkins chairman of medicine Myron (Mike) Weisfeldt, Hare started his own work with mesenchymal stem cells and was tapped to build the cardio biology section at Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering. In 2007, Hare joined the University of Miami in Florida and became founding director of its Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute. A South Africa native, Hare, 52, counts his family’s move from Johannesburg to the United States 40 years ago—specifically to Bethesda, MD, “the back yard of the NIH” (National Institutes of Health)—as life-changing. His mother, a university professor, and father, a lawyer, were part of a migration of professionals who relocated amid South Africa’s struggle with apartheid. We were a family that was conscious of the wrongs of apartheid, and against that way of treating people, which was one of the main reasons we wanted to leave. But that aside, Johannesburg was a nice place. We had a lot of family there. I had lots of cousins. It was not that different from the United States, except for apartheid. That was the big front-and-center problem. Even …

Dan Roden: Learn, Apply, Evolve

During 36 years at Temple University in Philadelphia, Steven Houser has been a leader in advancing scientific understanding of heart function. All along, he’s been driven by a desire to understand his father’s fatal heart disease, and to contribute important insights to help future patients. Steven Houser Houser and his collaborators—along with others in the field, he is quick to note—have shed light on numerous fundamental questions about how calcium regulates the beating of cardiomyocytes, including elucidating the details of calcium-induced calcium release.1,2 His research is probing calcium-dependent signaling pathways, aberrations in the hypertrophic, failing, or post-myocardial infarction heart,3–6 factors related to myocyte turnover,7 and potential treatment strategies including gene and stem cell therapy. Houser’s lab recently demonstrated that cortical bone-derived stem cells may be superior to cardiac stem cells in regenerating heart tissue after MI.8 Houser, 63, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and chair of physiology at Temple, tells Circulation Research he’s never afraid to jump into a scientific argument9 and help inform the debate. His strategy is always fair and careful experimentation, with an emphasis on reproducible findings. “I think the results from my group have stood the test of time,” he says. “That’s one of the things I’m proudest of—that our work can be repeated.” I grew up in New Jersey, in a little town called Magnolia, about 10 miles from Philadelphia, in suburban housing built primarily for soldiers returning after World War II. My dad had been in the service. [He] was a working guy. Mom stayed home, tried to keep me in line. My dad worked for a company called Western Electric. He was a wireman. My mom ended up going to college when I started high school. To help pay my way through college, …

1000 GENOMES: A World of Variation

As a scientist, Dan Roden grew up as clinical electrophysiology did. Widely recognized for his research into mechanisms behind abnormal heart rhythms and drug responses, Roden was on the front lines in the 1980s and 1990s as new antiarrhythmic drugs were tested, the ability to use catheters to study drug actions evolved, and the specialty of clinical electrophysiology arose. From his first publication, appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980,1 Roden set a tone for a career focused on variable action of antiarrhythmic therapies and genetic determinants of that variation. Much of his current work focuses on individual cardiac ion channel mutations and their role in variable responses to drug therapy, and applications of genomics to healthcare. Among his achievements, Roden is credited with developing the idea of reduced repolarization reserve leading to acquired long QT intervals and arrhythmias2–4 and was one of the first to suggest that early afterdepolarizations cause long QT-related arrhythmias.5,6 As leader of Vanderbilt University’s pharmacogenomics project PREDICT (Pharmacogenomic Resource for Enhanced Decisions in Care & Treatment)—which pre-emptively enhances individuals’ electronic medical records with personalized information about genetic variants that could guide drug therapy—Roden and colleagues7 have demonstrated multiple advantages of preemptive genotyping. Meanwhile Vanderbilt’s massive BioVU DNA bank, which includes ≈175 000 human DNA samples and which Roden pioneered and directs, is similarly showing the power of incorporating genomic data into electronic medical records, for research purposes.7–11 Roden, who initially flirted with a future in journalism, described to Circulation Research some of his interests beginning as a child of immigrants in Montreal and leading to not just 1 career as an investigator, but a series of interlinked careers—in clinical pharmacology, cellular electrophysiology, molecular genetics, and population science. The paradigm for his progress, …