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Dr. Kenneth R. Chien, MD, PhD
Dr. Chien is an
internationally recognized biologist
specializing in cardiovascular
science, as well as a pioneer in
developing new therapeutic
strategies to prevent the onset and
progression of heart failure. Since
July 2005, Dr. Chien has returned to
Boston as Scientific Director of the
Cardiovascular Research Center at
Massachusetts General Hospital and
Professor of Cell Biology at Harvard
Medical School in the Department of
Developmental & Regenerative
Biology. He is a member of the
Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where
he leads the university-wide
Cardiovascular Stem Cell Biology
Program. Upon his return to the
Harvard community, he was awarded
the distinction of the first endowed
chair of the Charles Addison &
Elizabeth Ann Sanders Professor of
Medicine. Prior to his MGH/HMS
appointments, Dr. Chien directed the
Institute for Molecular Medicine at
the University of California at San
Diego (UCSD). He is a professor
emeritus at UCSD, and continues his
appointment as an Adjunct Professor
of The Salk Institute.
A graduate of Harvard
University, Dr. Chien went on to
earn his MD and PhD from Temple
University in Pennsylvania. After
completing his internship,
residency, and cardiology fellowship
training at the University of Texas
Southwestern Medical School in
Dallas, he joined the faculty of the
UCSD Departments of Medicine and
Cardiology and the Center for
Molecular Genetics. Subsequently,
Dr. Chien became the Director of the
UCSD Institute of Molecular Medicine
and directed the joint UCSD-Salk
Institute National Institutes of
Health Molecular Medicine Training
Program. Given his longstanding
interest in training
physician-scientists, he has served
as an advisor/panel member of
several private biomedical
foundations, including the Doris
Duke Charitable Foundation and the
Wellcome Trust. He also has served
as a senior consultant and board
member to several biotechnology and
large pharmas over the past decade,
fostering collaborative ties between
academia and the private sector. His
most recent accomplishments include
the establishment of a new Institute
of Molecular Medicine at Peking
University, currently the premier
site for cardiovascular science and
medicine in China. He has received
several awards for his work,
including the Pasarow Foundation
Award and the Walter B. Cannon Award
of the American Physiological
Society.
Dr. Chien has
conducted groundbreaking research
focused on the molecular pathways of
cardiac development and disease,
much of which has been published in
the top tier journals in the field
of biomedical science, including
Cell, Science, and Nature. Most
recently, his laboratory discovered
the “progenitor cells” (similar to
stem cells) residing in the heart.
These cells signal a particularly
exciting breakthrough, as they are
capable of generating functioning
heart muscle cells. Since its
publication in the journal Nature in
2005, this finding has recently been
recognized as one of most highly
cited papers in the biomedical field
over the past six months. Recently,
the Chien lab has discovered a
“master” cardiovascular stem cell
that can give rise to all three
major cell types in the heart:
cardiac, smooth muscle, and
endothelial, and is implicated in
formation of heart muscle, the heart
pacemaker system, and the coronary
arteries (Cell, 2006). Since this
master cardiovascular stem cell can
be cloned from embryonic stem cells,
this new finding has significant
implications both for the study of
the heart development, drug
discovery, and disease target
identification, and for longer term
potential therapeutic application of
the cells to repair and replace
damaged heart, pacemaker, and
vascular tissue. |
