Associate Professor
Center for Cardiovascular and Muscular Diseases
Heart failure remains the leading cause of death worldwide because the human heart cannot regenerate after injury. Unlike newborn mammals, whose hearts can regrow following damage, the adult heart heals by forming scar tissue, leading to permanent loss of function.
The question I want to answer is whether we can reawaken the heart’s dormant regenerative capacity by restoring its youthful metabolic state. My research has shown that changing how cardiomyocytes use energy, specifically by reprogramming their mitochondrial metabolism, can restart cell division and tissue repair even in the adult heart.
Our goal now is to translate these discoveries into therapies that restore heart regeneration in human patients. If successful, this work could move medicine beyond managing heart failure to actually curing it, helping patients rebuild their own hearts after a heart attack and transforming the future of cardiovascular care.