Jeffery Daniel Molkentin (born January 15, 1967 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is an American molecular biologist. He is the director of Molecular Cardiovascular Biology for Cincinnati Children's hospital where he is also co-director of their Heart Institute. Molkentin holds a professorship at the University of Cincinnati's Department of Pediatrics.

Biography

Molkentin was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin., where he attended Marquette University, receiving a B.S. in biology in 1989. He began studies to be a medical doctor at the University of Wisconsin, but switched to a research program, and received his PhD in physiology from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1994. Molkentin's work focuses on

heart disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels. CVD includes coronary artery diseases (CAD) such as angina and myocardial infarction (commonly known as a heart attack). Other CVDs include stroke, hea ...

and

muscular dystrophy Muscular dystrophies (MD) are a genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of rare neuromuscular diseases that cause progressive weakness and breakdown of skeletal muscles over time. The disorders differ as to which muscles are primarily affe ...

, though he is involved in other types of research entailing calcium handling, ER stress signaling, cardiac hypertrophic signaling pathways, and COVID-19 disease mechanisms. One of Molkentin's most notable research achievements was his contribution to

stem cell therapy Stem-cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. , the only established therapy using stem cells is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This usually takes the form of a bone-marrow transplantation, but ...

in the heart and his disproving prior research about the topic. Molkentin is among the most highly cited researchers in the world, with his publications being cited over 50,000 times in literature. His work has been published in several prestigious research journals, including " Nature", "

PNAS ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America'' (often abbreviated ''PNAS'' or ''PNAS USA'') is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It is the official journal of the National Academy of Scien ...

", and "

Circulation Research ''Circulation Research'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. It is the official journal of the American Heart Association and its Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences. The journal covers rese ...

". Molkentin has been a full investigator for the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...

(HHMI) from 2008-2021.

Awards and honors

*1998

Pew Scholar The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. With over 6 billion in assets, its stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, a ...

in the Biomedical Sciences *2012 AHA Basic Science Research Prize *2015

Lucian Award The Louis and Artur Lucian Award in Cardiovascular Diseases is a prize for cardiovascular medicine conferred by McGill University. Described as Canada's "top cardiovascular research prize", it has been awarded annually since 1978, except in 2007. __ ...

*2019 AHA Merit Award Winner

Selected publications

MCUb induction protects the heart from postischemic remodeling.
Huo, J; Lu, S; Kwong, JQ; Bround, MJ; Grimes, KM; Sargent, MA; Brown, ME; Davis, ME; Bers, DM; Molkentin, JD. ''Circulation Research''. 2020; 127:379-390.
An acute immune response underlies the benefit of cardiac stem cell therapy.
Vagnozzi, RJ; Maillet, M; Sargent, MA; Khalil, H; Johansen, AK Z; Schwanekamp, JA; York, AJ; Huang, V; Nahrendorf, M; Sadayappan, S; et al. ''Nature''. 2020; 577:405-409.
Disruption of valosin-containing protein activity causes cardiomyopathy and reveals pleiotropic functions in cardiac homeostasis.
Brody, MJ; Vanhoutte, D; Bakshi, CV; Liu, R; Correll, RN; Sargent, MA; Molkentin, JD. ''The Journal of biological chemistry''. 2019; 294:8918-8929.
ERK1/2 signaling induces skeletal muscle slow fiber-type switching and reduces muscular dystrophy disease severity.
Boyer, JG; Prasad, V; Song, T; Lee, D; Fu, X; Grimes, KM; Sargent, MA; Sadayappan, S; Molkentin, JD. ''JCI insight''. 2019; 5.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Molkentin, Jeffery D. 1967 births University of Cincinnati people Molecular biologists Marquette University alumni Living people