Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine

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.

The Clarke Lab uses genomics, epidemiology, and data science to understand cardiovascular disease risk. Key areas of focus include:

1. Equitable development and applications of polygenic risk scores

2. Novel phenotyping using electronic health records, wearables, and/or medical imaging

3.  Artificial intelligence applications to medical imaging

4. Studying nataionl biobanks (Million Veteran Program, UK Biobank, All of Us)

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.

The Health Equity Advancement through Research and Technology (HEART) Lab, led by Dr. Fatima Rodriguez, aims to develop innovative approaches to understanding and eliminating cardiovascular disease health disparities across diverse and understudied populations. Prior and current projects seek to identify the source of inequities in cardiovascular disease by race, ethnicity, language, sex, age, and more. We have documented extensive barriers to guideline adherence to cardiovascular prevention recommendations and how these result in adverse clinical outcomes.

Our heart transplant research group focuses on clinical and translational research in the field of heart transplantation.

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.

I am a physician scientist with interests in cardiomyopathies, rare and undiagnosed diseases, therapeutics and genomics. I have research training in myocardial and skeletal muscle biology and genetics, genomics, and multi-scale networks. In addition to my research training, I am a physician with interest and experience treating patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, neuromuscular disease associated cardiomyopathies, and inherited dilated cardiomyopathies. I have clinical training in medicine, cardiology, cardiovascular genetics, and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology.

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.