BME Seminar Series: Dr. Mark Ziolo - The Ohio State University

Mark Ziolo, PhD, Professor, Department of Physiology and Cell Biology

All dates for this event occur in the past.

245 Bevis Hall
245 Bevis Hall
1080 Carmack Rd.
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

Abstract: 

"Brown Adipose Tissue as a Therapeutic for Heart Disease"

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Unfortunately, death from heart disease will continue to grow as the population ages and becomes obese. There is a dire need for novel therapeutics to combat heart disease. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) is a thermogenic tissue that plays an important role in energy balance. Our novel data show that BAT is also an endocrine organ  that releases factors (i.e., batokines) that can regulate cardiac function. We believe that targeting these batokines can be a novel approach to palliate heart disease.

Bio:

I received my PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago with Dr. John Solaro. I then did my Postdoctoral fellowship at Loyola University in the lab of Dr. Don Bers. I came to OSU as an Assistant Professor in 2004.  My research area is cardiovascular biology. My lab is using an integrated (biochemical and physiological) and multi-level (isolated protein, cellular and in vivo) approach to comprehensively study heart function for the development of novel therapeutic treatments for heart disease. My research interests are understanding how various signaling pathways can modulate heart function and how these pathways are altered in disease. Currently, the lab is funded via multiple grants to investigate the effects of brown adipose tissue (BAT) and signaling lipids released from BAT (known as batokines) on the heart. Our studies use various pre-clinical murine models of heart disease (myocardial infarction, pressure overload heart failure, diabetes, senescence, hypertrophy and hypertension) as well as failing and non-failing human heart tissue.