Walter J. Koch to Give the Thomas W. Smith Memorial Lecture at the 2009 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions
The
2009 Thomas W. Smith Memorial Lecture at the American Heart Association
Scientific Sessions will be given by Walter J. Koch, Ph.D., director of
the Center for Translational Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University.
The lecture will be given on Monday, November 16, at the meeting in
Orlando, Fla.
This
Thomas W. Smith Memorial Lecture is an award given on behalf of the AHA
Council on Basic Science to honor Dr. Thomas W. Smith, a pioneer in the
application of biochemical, cellular and molecular approaches to
investigative cardiac contractility. Dr. Smith was chief of
cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor
of medicine at Harvard Medical School until he died of cancer at age
60, in 1997.
“Dr.
Koch and his research team deserve to be recognized with the
prestigious Thomas W. Smith Memorial Lecture, as they’ve conducted
ground-breaking research that has led to new treatments for chronic
heart failure,” said Arthur Feldman, M.D., chairman of the department
of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson
University.
The
lecture Dr. Koch is giving is titled “GRK2 as a Novel Therapeutic
Target for Heart Failure.” He will be discussing his research of GRK2,
a protein that he found to contribute to chronic heart failure. Dr.
Koch’s research led to an inhibitor called bARKct, which inhibits the
overexpression of GRK2, a main cause of heart failure.
Dr. Koch is also the W.W. Smith Professor of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, and Head
of the George Zallie and Family Laboratory for Cardiovascular Gene Therapy at Jefferson.
Media Only Contact:
Emily Shafer
Thomas Jefferson University Hospital
Phone: (215) 955-6300
Published: 11/16/2009