Mark Drazner, M.D.                                          To view CV, click here
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Cardiology

 Daniel Dries, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine     

The broad long-term objective of our laboratory is to determine the genetic basis for inter-individual variability in the development and progression of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure. We plan to test the hypotheses that variants in candidate genes are associated with development of LVH, heart failure, or progression of these diseases. Pathways of interest include the G-protein coupled receptor/Gaq, calcineurin, and natriuretic peptides. Genes from patients with these conditions are being sequenced to identify novel variants.
Association studies will then be performed using the participants of the Dallas Heart Disease Prevention Project (DHDPP). In that project, 3000 randomly selected individuals (prespecified 50% African-American recruitment) will undergo anthropomorphic and blood pressure measurements, cardiac MRI to measure LV mass, venipuncture for DNA isolation, and subsequent genotyping for allelic variants identified in the Program of Genomic applications. Analytic methods will be developed to assess the association of combinations of various allelic variants with LV mass and cardiac failure.