Senior Investigator and President Emeritus, Gladstone Institutes
Professor, Pathology and Medicine
University of California
San Francisco, Calif.
Dr. Robert W. Mahley is a senior investigator at both the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and president-emeritus of the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Mahley is also a professor of pathology and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. As president, Dr. Mahley oversaw Gladstone’s establishment and its growth to include three institutes. He recently developed the Gladstone Center for Translational Research to facilitate the movement of some aspects of Gladstone’s basic research into developmental targets. In 2010, after 30 years as president, he stepped down to more actively pursue his research.
Dr. Mahley is an internationally known expert on heart disease, cholesterol metabolism and, more recently, Alzheimer’s disease. He studies plasma lipoproteins and particularly apolipoprotein (apo) E, the major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. His seminal research has defined apoE’s critical role in cholesterol homeostasis and atherosclerosis. His Turkish Heart Study shed light on the genetics of low HDL-C. He has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the role of apoE in the nervous system, specifically in nerve injury and regeneration and in the remodeling of neurites on neuronal cells. These findings laid the groundwork for the explosion of research linking apoE4, a variant of apoE, to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration.
In 1971, Dr. Mahley joined the staff of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and in 1975 became head of the Comparative Atherosclerosis and Arterial Metabolism Section. Four years later, he was recruited to create the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Mahley is a member of many scientific and professional societies, including the American Heart Association, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Society for Neuroscience. In addition, he serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
Dr. Mahley is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He recently received the Builders of Science Award from Research!America for his leadership as Gladstone’s founding director and president, guiding its growth to become one of the world’s foremost independent research institutes.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee, in 1963, Dr. Mahley completed both an MD and a PhD at Vanderbilt University in 1970. The following year he did a pathology internship at Vanderbilt.
Senior Investigator and President Emeritus, Gladstone Institutes
Professor, Pathology and Medicine
University of California
San Francisco, Calif.
Dr. Robert W. Mahley is a senior investigator at both the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and president-emeritus of the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Mahley is also a professor of pathology and medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. As president, Dr. Mahley oversaw Gladstone’s establishment and its growth to include three institutes. He recently developed the Gladstone Center for Translational Research to facilitate the movement of some aspects of Gladstone’s basic research into developmental targets. In 2010, after 30 years as president, he stepped down to more actively pursue his research.
Dr. Mahley is an internationally known expert on heart disease, cholesterol metabolism and, more recently, Alzheimer’s disease. He studies plasma lipoproteins and particularly apolipoprotein (apo) E, the major genetic risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease. His seminal research has defined apoE’s critical role in cholesterol homeostasis and atherosclerosis. His Turkish Heart Study shed light on the genetics of low HDL-C. He has also made fundamental contributions to understanding the role of apoE in the nervous system, specifically in nerve injury and regeneration and in the remodeling of neurites on neuronal cells. These findings laid the groundwork for the explosion of research linking apoE4, a variant of apoE, to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegeneration.
In 1971, Dr. Mahley joined the staff of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, and in 1975 became head of the Comparative Atherosclerosis and Arterial Metabolism Section. Four years later, he was recruited to create the Gladstone Institutes. Dr. Mahley is a member of many scientific and professional societies, including the American Heart Association, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Association of American Physicians, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Society for Neuroscience. In addition, he serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals.
Dr. Mahley is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He recently received the Builders of Science Award from Research!America for his leadership as Gladstone’s founding director and president, guiding its growth to become one of the world’s foremost independent research institutes.
After earning a bachelor’s degree from Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee, in 1963, Dr. Mahley completed both an MD and a PhD at Vanderbilt University in 1970. The following year he did a pathology internship at Vanderbilt.
Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine
University of Vermont College of Medicine
Burlington, Vt.
Ken Mann’s blood coagulation studies began with elucidation of the multiple forms of thrombin (1969). Over the course of his career he combined biophysical, biochemical, cell biological and clinical research to investigate the formation of blood pro- and anticoagulants and their mechanisms of action. His laboratory described the biochemistry and dynamics of thrombin formation in normal and pathologic conditions and the influence of pharmacologic interventions on the process. These activities have led to over 500 publications and the issue of 12 patents. His research program has been strongly supported by the NIH, the AHA and the Pharmaceutical Industry. Mann’s contributions have been recognized by selection for the E.I., Sol Sherry and Special Recognition Awards from the AHA, E. Donnall Thomas Prize and Stratton Medal of the American Society of Hematology, Grant Medal from the International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis, and Henri Chaigneau Prize from the Association Française des Hémophiles. He is a UVM Scholar, member of the Vermont Academy of Science and Distinguished Alumnus of the Mayo Foundation. He has served as Member of the SAC of the AHA, President of the Association of Medical and Graduate Departments of Biochemistry, Chairman of the Council on Thrombosis and Council Chairman of the International Society on Thrombosis and Hemostasis, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Leducq Foundation, the Board of Directors of the National Hemophilia Foundation and on the Board and Treasurer of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. He has made extensive contributions to the peer review process of the NIH, the AHA and other philanthropic organizations. He has provided editorial services to the Journal of Biological Chemistry, ATVB, Blood, and the Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis.
Throughout his research career he has been actively engaged in graduate and medical education and has contributed to the training of a large number of highly successful scientists who continue to work in the blood coagulation field. He attributes his successful research career to his associations with many exceptional students, mentors and collaborators and to his spouse, Jeanette, who has supported his professional aspirations for over 40 years.
Chief, Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women's Health, Harvard Medical School
Boston, Mass.
JoAnn E. Manson, MD, MPH, DrPH, FAHA, is Chief of the Division of Preventive Medicine, as well as Co-Director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is Professor of Medicine and the Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Harvard Medical School. The focus of Dr. Manson’s research has been women's health, randomized clinical trials in cardiovascular disease prevention, and translational research. Her primary interests include the role of estrogen and hormonal factors, moderate vs vigorous physical activity, nutritional interventions, and other lifestyle modifications as determinants of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in women. She is Principal Investigator of several grants from the National Institutes of Health, including the VITamin D and OmegA-3 TriaL (VITAL), the Women’s Health Initiative Vanguard Clinical Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, the Women’s Antioxidant and Folic Acid Cardiovascular Trial, and Biochemical and Genetic Risk Factors for CVD in Women, among others. She is also PI of the Boston site for the KEEPS trial.
Dr. Manson is a member of many professional societies and serves on the editorial/medical advisory boards of several medical journals. She has received numerous awards and honors, including the “Woman in Science” Award from the American Medical Women’s Association, election to membership in the Association of American Physicians, the Harvard College Women’s Professional Achievement Award, fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the North American Menopause Society’s Postmenopausal Cardiovascular Health Research Award, the International Menopause Society’s Henry Burger Research Prize, and the American Heart Association’s Population Research Prize. She served on the Executive Committee of the NHLBI’s Strategic Planning Committee, as well as on several Institute of Medicine committees and workshops, and grant study sections. She has published more than 700 articles in the medical literature, has served as editor-in-chief of several textbooks including Prevention of Myocardial Infarction and Clinical Trials in Heart Disease: A Companion to Braunwald’s Heart Disease, as well as authored several health-related books for lay audiences. She is one of the top 10 most highly cited authors in the world in the field of clinical medicine and has conducted research that has influenced national guidelines, clinical practice, and health policy. Dr. Manson was one of the physicians featured in the National Library of Medicine’s exhibition, “History of American Women Physicians”, in Bethesda, MD. She is currently President of the North American Menopause Society.
Professor of Pediatrics, Chair, Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology
Executive Co-Director of the Heart Institute
Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation
Cincinnati, Ohio
Dr. Robbins received his Ph. D. in Genetics and Development in 1976 from the University of Connecticut and was appointed as Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He rose through the academic ranks, and left Missouri to join the Department of Pharmacology and Cell Biophysics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1987. In 1993 he moved to the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital to start a new division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology and in July 2009, formed the Heart Institute, integrating the basic and clinical arms of Pediatric Cardiology. He currently is a Professor of Pediatrics, Chair, Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology, Associate Chair of the Research Foundation and Executive Co-Director of the Heart Institute. He has won a number of teaching and research awards, including the Golden Apple awarded by the medical students for excellence in teaching, the Kaplan Award for innovative research, the National Research Achievement Award from the American Heart Association, the President’s Distinguished Lecture award from the International Society for Heart Research, the Rieveschel Award for Outstanding Re-search Achievements and the Drake Medal. He was an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Heart Association, the International Society for Heart Research and was elected to the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences. He has served on and chaired numerous national research review committees for the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. He currently serves on 11 Editorial Boards and is a Senior Associate Editor for Circulation Research.
Dr. Robbins has been publishing in the field of cardiovascular biology for approximately 20 years. With over 200 publications during this period, his contributions have changed the way that basic cardiovascular research is done, by allowing the research community to carry out “gain-of-function” approaches specifically in the myocardium via cardiac-specific transgenesis. In a series of landmark papers, Robbins first defined the promoter elements needed to target and drive high levels of gene expression in the mammalian heart. Identifying the cis-trans interactions was what drove the basic research but, understanding the implications, Robbins then took the work further and explored the utility of cardiac-specific gene expression as a method of doing defined genetics in the mammalian four-chambered heart. After the initial proof-of-principal showing that cardiac specific trans-genesis was feasible, he defined, built and tested a set of reagents that is now routinely used by hundreds of laboratories to carry out genetic experiments in the mouse cardiovascular system.
Dr. Robbins unambiguously showed the utility of the general approach and developed a set of robust reagents that could easily be used to create animal models of cardiovascular disease. Dr. Robbins’ work has changed the way in which we explore the basic pathology of cardiovascular disease. With well over 700 different models being developed and published using his reagents, the work that Dr. Robbins published allowed the entire field to move forward at a pace undreamed of only 15 years ago. A contributing factor to the rapid spread of the technology was Dr. Robbins’ early decision to make the reagents freely avail-able, allowing the rapid dissemination of the needed tools, free from the confines of university intellectual property concerns.
Dr. Robbins went on to use gain-of-function approaches to further his own investigations into the underlying pathologies of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, as well as defining the structure-function relationships in a number of the contractile proteins. His recent experiments have established the importance of protein quality control and proteotoxicity as causative for a class of cardiomyopathies, which has recently led to the startling observation that intracellular pre-amyloids appear to play an important, and possibly generalized role in cardiovascular diseases of various etiologies.
Aram V. Chobanian Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine
Director, Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute
Boston University School of Medicine
Boston, Mass.
Kenneth Walsh is the Aram V. Chobanian Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Whitaker Cardiovascular at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. Walsh, who received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, previously held faculty positions at Case Western Reserve University and at Tufts University School of Medicine.
The Walsh laboratory investigates the signaling- and transcriptional-regulatory mechanisms that control both normal and pathological tissue growth in the cardiovascular system. Many of these studies involved analyses of the PI3-kinase/Akt/GSK/Forkhead signaling axis. This pathway is of critical importance in the regulation of organ growth and body size. Signaling through this pathway controls cellular enlargement (hypertrophy), cell death (apoptosis), and blood vessel recruitment and growth (angiogenesis). They have shown that the PI3-kinase/Akt/GSK/Forkhead signaling axis regulates multiple steps critical in angiogenesis including endothelial cell apoptosis, differentiation, migration and nitric oxide production. They have also shown that some of the same signaling steps are important for physiological and pathological cardiac hypertrophy, and regulate myocyte survival in models of heart disease.
Ongoing projects in the Walsh laboratory analyze mechanisms of inter-tissue communication within the cardiovascular system and how these regulatory mechanisms are perturbed by obesity-induced metabolic dysfunction. Using mouse genetic models, they have identified how miscommunication between cardiac myocytes and vascular endothelial cells contributes to the transitions from compensated hypertrophy to heart failure. Other studies examine how alterations in the expression of adipocyte-derived cytokines, referred to as adipokines, interfere with normal signaling within the cardiovascular system and thereby contribute to obesity-linked cardiovascular disease. Related projects examine how age-associated loss of skeletal muscle mass affects metabolic and cardiovascular function, and they are exploring the possibility that muscle-secreted factors (myokines) confer some of the beneficial effects of exercise training on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Dr. Walsh has published approximately 300 articles, of which 71 have received more than 100 citations. He is the recipient of multiple research grants from the National Institutes of Health, including a MERIT Award. This year he was awarded a Program Project Grant to conduct basic and clinical studies on how the vascular endothelium functions at the interface of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Dr. Walsh is a member of the Cardiac Contractility, Hypertrophy and Failure Study Section for the National Institutes of Health. He is an Associate Editor for the journal Circulation and serves on numerous editorial boards including Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, Circulation Research, Hypertension Research and Skeletal Muscle. Dr. Walsh is the recipient of the Irvine F. Page Award from the Council on Arteriosclerosis and was previously an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association.
