Louisville Metropolitan Area
General: In the past 12 years my research has focused on investigating novel mechanisms and therapies for cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure in animal models. As a pharmacist I have a special interest in the translation of my findings into human drug therapy for heart disease and I wish to focus my career on contributing to the fascinating early steps in the long process of drug development. To pursue my long-term goal of translating my findings in mouse models into human drug therapy for heart failure (at least with regard to the initial steps), I have taken further steps in two main directions: 1. On August 2013 I was awarded a fellowship for further training on the cutting edge iPS-CM and direct cardiac reprogramming technologies in addition to the single cell genome and epigenome profiling during the reprogramming process in Prof. Deepak Srivastava laboratory at the J David Gladstone Research institutes. During this training I was able to further progress my starting up projects and learn the essential technologies which I will need to run my laboratory. During this training, I was able to develop a novel screening platform for direct cardiac reprogramming and to run a high-throughput small molecule screening to improve the efficiency of direct cardiac reprogramming. I was able to identify small molecules which are able to enhance the efficiency of cardiac reprogramming by 10 folds. 2. As part of my interest in pharmaceutical application of my research: In collaboration with the NC3Rs and the Fraunhofer IME-SP (Hamburg) we are developing novel methods to screen for cardiotoxicity and developmental defects using human pluripotent stem cells. This project has recently received funding from the NC3Rs for a proof of concept study for one year. For more details see: http://www.crackit.org.uk/share/crackitsolutions/hps-cm & http://www.crackit.org.uk/share/crackitsolutions/DART