Dr. Sean M. Wu Receives the 2014 David Lawrence Stein Award from the American Heart Association Western Region Affiliate

The Stanford Cardiovascular Institute is pleased to announce that Sean M. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., the Child Health Research Institute/Lucile Packard Foundation for Children Endowed Faculty Scholar and Assistant Professor of Medicine and (by courtesy) Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine was awarded the “David Lawrence Stein Research Award” by the American Heart Association-Western Region Affiliate.

The David Lawrence Stein Research Award is given in recognition of outstanding achievement in pediatric research and is presented to the researcher whose grant the American Heart Association scores the highest among the hundreds it receives from the Western Region Affiliate for consideration each year.

Dr. Wu’s grant, entitled, “Transcription Factor Interplay at the Nkx2.5 Cardiac Enhancer,” seeks to determine the key genes regulating cardiac development during mesodermal commitment into cardiac progenitor cells using both embryonic mice and mouse embryonic stem cells as models. These cardiac genes have been strongly implicated in the development of congenital heart diseases but the mechanism of how these genes act to maintain normal heart formation remains unclear.

The research support from the AHA will enable Dr. Wu to identify the critical transcription factors that drive the expression of Nkx2.5 and how these factors are regulated during embryonic development.