Cardiovascular Institute

Amyloidosis, heart failure, transplantation

The lifetime risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) is determined by the genetic makeup and exposure to modifiable risk factors. The Cardiovascular Link to Environmental ActioN (CLEAN) Lab is interested in understanding how various environmental pollutants (eg. tobacco, e-cigarettes, air pollution and wildfire) interact with genes to affect the transcriptome, epigenome, and eventually disease phenotype of CVD. The current focus is to investigate how different toxic exposures can adversely remodel the vascular wall leading to increased cardiac events.

My laboratory's overall goal is to (i) understand the mechanisms of right heart failure in children and adults with congenital heart disease and (ii) to develop biomarkers as a plasma signature of myocardial events to better understand the mechanisms of heart failure, improve monitoring of disease progression, early detection of heart failure and risk-stratification.

Our lab is dedicated to discovering the underpinnings of immune-related diseases in the heart. Many cancer drugs may cause immune-related toxicity in the heart, including severe myocarditis, making it difficult for patients with cancer to get the life-saving treatments they need. We have previously discovered that several key types of immune cells may be involved in potentiating disease. We are currently performing experiments to pin down the underlying mechanisms of how immune cells may cause various inflammatory heart diseases.

Stanford Solutions Science Lab.

The research interests of the molecular imaging instrumentation lab are to create novel instrumentation and software algorithms for in vivo imaging of molecular signatures of disease in humans and small laboratory animals. These new cameras efficiently image radiation emissions in the form of positrons, annihilation photons, gamma rays, and/or light emitted from molecular contrast agents that were introduced into the body and distributed in the subject tissues.

The overall theme of our research has been the genetic basis of cardiovascular disease across the continuum from Discovery to the development of Model Systems to the Translation of these findings to the clinic and most recently to the Public Health aspect of genetics.

Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD is Director of Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University. His lab works on cardiovascular genomics and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The main goals are to (i) understand basic disease mechanisms, (ii) accelerate drug discovery and screening, (iii) develop “clinical trial in a dish” concept, and (iv) implement precision medicine for patients.

My laboratory seeks to identify mechanisms responsible for human congenital heart disease, the most common cause of still-births in the U.S. and one of the major contributors to morbidity and mortality in infants and toddlers.