CVRI Scientists

Robin M. Shaw, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine

Research Interests:
Cardiac Electrophysiology, Ion Channels, Arrhythmia, Sudden Cardiac Death, Heart Failure

Summary:
The basic function of the heart is to work as a pump, circulating blood through the lungs and the rest of the body. For the heart to work properly, the function of millions of individual heart cells needs to be coordinated each second to act in synchrony. In the normal heart, a biological electrical system exists to coordinate the heart cells and consists of ion channels that regulate the flow of sodium, calcium and potassium ions in and out of cells. The collective movement of these molecules in and out of these ion channels creates the signals for the cells to contract. In the diseased heart, damage from blocked heart arteries leads to improper cellular expression of the ion channels, which results in dangerous heart rhythms such as the 'flatline' of sudden cardiac death. In this situation, the biological electrical system is 'short circuited', and millions of cells are contracting randomly, leaving a nonworking pump. There are 200,000 to 400,000 cases of sudden cardiac death in the United States each year. In addition, cumulative damage to the heart over time can result in the poorly coordinated and weakened contraction of congestive heart failure, which affects five million Americans. For these reasons, we are very interested in ion channel regulation in both normal and damaged heart cells. We use a cell biology based approach to study the movement of the proteins that form the channels as they travel from their site of formation to their placement and specific locations on the heart cell membrane. Specific projects in the laboratory involve studying how cells lose communication with each other and with their signals to contract by altering the delivery of ion channels to their proper functional subregion on the cell membrane. The ultimate goal is to use the insights gained by these studies to develop ion channel targeted therapeutic interventions that decrease the incidence and impact of sudden cardiac death and heart failure.