Interest Area: Regulation of Cardiac Hypertrophy
We are actively engaged in attempting to understand the molecular events that underlie the cardiac growth response, both developmentally as well as in the adult heart in response to pathologic stimuli such as pressure overload (hypertension), ischemic injury, infectious agents, congenital malformations, valvular disease, and genetic mutation in sarcomeric proteins. Stress- and growth factor-responsive signaling pathways transduce developmental, physiologic, and pathologic stimuli to affect myocardial maturation and remodeling at the whole organ level, at the cellular level, and at the molecular level. These signal transduction events are typically very complicated and involve the orchestration of G-protein-coupled receptors, receptor tyrosine kinases, various traditional G-proteins as well as the low molecular weight G-proteins of the Rho family, adaptor signaling complexes, cascades of kinases and phosphatases, and ultimately transcription factors. The Molkentin laboratory is interested in defining novel signaling and transcriptional regulatory events that underlie the hypertrophic program at each of these various levels. We rely heavily on generating gene targeted (knock-out) as transgenic mice as models to assess the function of specific signaling factors within the intact myocardium. We also use tissue-specific gene targeting in the heart and temporally-regulated gene activation and inactivation in vivo. The laboratory also utilizes adenoviral-mediated gene transfer in cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes as an additional model for investigating the cardiac hypertrophic response.
Contact Us
The Molkentin Laboratory is part of the Division of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology at Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation. The lab is located in Location R (Research Foundation Building), Room 3030.
Jeffery D. Molkentin PhD
Professor
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
3333 Burnet Ave, MLC7020
Room 3030
Cincinnati, OH 45229-3039
Telephone: 513-636-3557
Email: jeff.molkentin@cchmc.org
