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Dec 07 “Fuel Metabolic Checkpoints as Targets for Cardiometabolic Disease”-2017 Joseph Larner Memorial Lecture in Pharmacology by Daniel P. Kelley

December 7, 2017 by zrb8mf@virginia.edu

[1st Floor PHCC (Auditorium] A lectureship was established to honor the memory of Joseph Larner, who served as Professor and Chair of the Pharmacology Department for many years. During his time as Chair he recruited and mentored numerous successful faculty, including Al Gilman. He continued to be an inspiration to everyone who knew him, especially our graduate students, who were in awe of his energy and enthusiasm as he kept up his science and maintained an active departmental presence well into his 90s. In addition to honoring Dr. Larner’s memory, the goal of this lectureship is to highlight exciting new advances in an area that held great interest for him: the pervasive role of metabolism/cell signaling in human disease.

About this Year’s Speaker:

Hosted by Thurl Harris, Daniel P. Kelly, M.D is the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor and Director at Penn Cardiovascular Institute, University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Kelly obtained his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine,
residency training at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, and postdoctoral and clinical cardiology training at Washington University School of Medicine. He joined the Washington University School of Medicine faculty in 1989 and rapidly moved up the ranks to Professor of Medicine, Molecular Biology & Pharmacology, and Pediatrics, and served as Chief of the Cardiovascular Division and founding Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Research. In 2008, Dr. Kelly assumed the role of founding Scientific Director for the east coast Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute located in Lake Nona, Florida. In August 2017, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he was named Director of the Penn Cardiovascular Institute.

Dr. Kelly’s research interests stem from an early fascination with rare inborn errors in mitochondrial metabolism in children which cause sudden death and heart failure. As a young researcher at Washington University, Dr. Kelly defined the genetic basis for a common inborn error in mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation, work that led to the development of practical screening tests for newborns. Thereafter, he became interested in how similar derangements in cardiac energy metabolism contribute to heart failure and sudden death in common acquired forms of mitochondrial diseases caused by hypertension, ischemic injury, and diabetes. His work defined the transcriptional regulatory axis involved in the control of cardiac fuel and energy metabolism through pioneering fundamental studies on nuclear receptors including the PPARs, estrogen-related receptors (ERRs), and their transcriptional coactivator PGC-1.

The Kelly laboratory has identified molecular “switches” in this regulatory pathway that potentially define distinct forms of heart failure, an important step towards identifying therapeutic targets for phenotype-specific treatment of heart failure. His laboratory is also engaged in translation of these discoveries, including early stage drug discovery efforts.

Dr. Kelly is a recipient of the American Heart Association Basic Science Prize and currently serves on the Editorial Boards of The Journal of Clinical Investigation and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology-Basic to Translational Science.