My main research interest is to identify novel therapies for heart failure focusing on endogenous heart repair and regeneration mechanisms. As a pharmacist by training and the unique combination of academic and industry experience, my major aim is to perform translational research which directly benefits heart failure patients.
During my research endeavors, I have studied novel mechanisms and therapies for cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure in animal models. During my doctoral and first postdoctoral training, I identified the role of the plasma membrane calcium ATPase isoform 4 (PMCA4) in cardiac physiology and pathophysiology. As a pharmacist, I have a special interest in translating my findings into human drug therapies for heart disease. Thus, I started screening drugs to identify the first specific inhibitor for PMCA4, which could be used as a novel treatment for cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. Recently, in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the Medical Research council in the UK, and the drug company Astra Zeneca, we created a program to identify new drugs that treat heart failure by targeting PMCA4.
To expand my expertise in cardiac regeneration, I joined Prof. Deepak Srivastava’s laboratory at the Gladstone Institutes in November 2013. In Srivastava lab I acquired training on cutting-edge technology for direct cardiac reprogramming, and profiling single-cell genomes and epigenomes during the reprogramming process. The skills that I have learned while working with Prof. Srivastava will be invaluable to running my independent laboratory. I worked on two parallel approaches to induce endogenous heart repair: direct cardiac reprogramming and inducing cardiomyocyte proliferation. Both approaches were highly successful. The direct reprogramming project was highly recognized by our scientific community, as it was awarded a Scientist Development Grant award from the AHA, manuscript was published in Circulation and this work was chosen as finalist at the Louis N. and Arnold M. Katz Basic Science Research Prize for Young Investigators from The AHA in 2016. In addition, the cardiomyocyte proliferation project was accepted for publication in Cell and awarded the March 22, 2018 issue cover for the journal. In October 2016, Dr. Srivastava founded a new start up (Tenaya Therapeutics) with $50 million investment from the column group to develop new therapies for heart failure based on my findings. Therefore, I was the first scientist recruited to the company to lead the efforts of direct cardiac reprogramming where I enjoyed the unique industry experience in building a start up from scratch. Due to the quick success in Tenaya, the research and development section ended very soon and now the major focus on scaling up viral manufacturing and filing IND which is away from my interest. Therefore, I have decided to go back to academia to initiate new discovery programs for heart failure therapy mainly focusing on understanding the regulation of cardiomyocyte proliferation. Furthermore, my laboratory established a novel system for long term culture of human and pig heart slices and efficiently demonstrating the efficacy of direct cardiac reprogramming in such pre-clinical models (Ou et al., Circulation Research, In Press):