Sarver Heart Center Grand Rounds - Blessed With A 'Big Heart': Dilated Cardiomyopathy In The Age Of Precision Medicine

Fri, 09/21/2018 - 12:00pm

Blessed With A 'Big Heart': Dilated Cardiomyopathy In The Age Of Precision Medicine

Matthew Taylor, MD, PhD
Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), CU Denver

Matt Taylor MD, PhD, received his undergraduate degree in genetics from the University of California at Berkeley. After completing medical school at the University of Southern California, he moved to Colorado for residency training programs in internal medicine and clinical genetics. In 2005 he received a doctorate from the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) for work related to the genetic basis of dilated cardiomyopathy.

Clinically, he directs the Adult Medical Genetics clinic that serves adults and families with genetic conditions in the Denver and Rocky Mountain region. The clinic services include genetic diagnosis, testing and counseling. Additionally, the clinic serves as a regional hub for recruitment of patients with rare genetic diseases as well as for clinical trials in genetic diseases where novel therapies are now coming online in the trial arena.

Many of his research subjects initially are identified through this clinic and feed into his laboratory’s research on inherited cardiomyopathies, major causes of heart failure and heart transplantation. While the initial focus was on a nearest-neighbor approach in candidate gene studies, the current work involves whole Exome studies in multi-generational cardiomyopathy families. This work has been funded through the NIH (both R01 and CCTSI funding) and most recently the laboratory was informed of successful funding from the Leducq Foundation as part of a multi-center trans-Atlantic partnership to study mechanisms of arrhythmias in cardiomyopathies. In addition to descriptive and mechanistic studies in cardiomyopathies, his group is just initiating two clinical trials in rare forms of hereditary cardiomyopathy where specific mutational sub-classes of disease are targeted with therapies designed to benefit those individuals with mutations in key subsets of cardiomyopathy genes.

**This Grand Rounds presentation is supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, & Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number T32HL007249.

 

Event Location: 

Sarver Heart Center, Room 4137