Dr. Vasanth Vedantham awarded NIH Grant for High-Risk & High-Reward Research

Vasanth Vedantham, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine and cardiologist specializing in the treatment of heart rhythm disorders, conducts research on the development, physiology and evolution of heart rhythm from a multidisciplinary perspective. His current investigations are focused on understanding the origin and regulation of cardiac pacemaker cells, highly specialized heart cells that are responsible for initiating each heartbeat. His previous work defined mechanisms of gene regulation in pacemaker cells that allow them to function as the leading pacemakers of the heart. His lab is using a variety of approaches to develop a detailed, mechanistic model for how these cells arise during development and form a discrete functional node. Ultimately, his goal is to develop novel regenerative and preventive therapies for arrhythmias that are informed by bench science and by his practice as a clinical cardiac electrophysiologist.