Faculty/Staff
Mario Delmar, M.D., Ph.D.
Frank N. Wilson Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine
Professor of Internal Medicine and of Molecular and Integrative Physiology
Co-director of the U-M Center for Arrhythmia Research
Prior to joining U-M last December, Dr. Delmar was Professor of Pharmacology at the SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. He earned his MD from the Universidad Metropolitana in Mexico City, Mexico and his PhD from the Instituto Politecnico Nacional also in Mexico City. He did his postdoctoral research fellowship in Cardiac Electrophysiology in the Department of Pharmacology at the SUNY Upstate Medical University, and was subsequently retained as an Assistant Professor in the same Department. He rapidly grew through the ranks and gained an international reputation as a scientist and teacher.
Research in his laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias. His studies center on the interactions between macromolecular complexes that maintain electrical and mechanical communication between cardiac cells. Specifically, his laboratory seeks to characterize the structure, function and regulation of the cardiac gap junction protein Connexin43, and its interactions with other molecules present at the intercalated disc (the site of intercellular communication between myocytes).
They currently focus on the following projects:
a) Development of pharmacophores targeted to connexin43 that prevent closure of cardiac gap junctions under pathological conditions.
b) Characterization of the molecular crosstalk between gap junctions (responsible for electrical coupling) and desmosomes (responsible for mechanical continuity). This project is pertinent to the pathology of an inherited disease, called arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy that is linked to mutations in proteins of the cardiac desmosome.
c) Extension of the previous project to the possible interactions between gap junctions, and the sodium channel complex.
d) Characterization of the function and structure of the intercalated disc in experimental models of inherited hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. As a result of his groundbreaking research, Dr. Delmar has earned a reputation as one of the country's foremost experts in understanding the mechanisms of cell-to-cell communication in the heart.
Publications
Dr. Delmar's publications are listed on PubMed. You can view them here.
E-mail: mdelmar@umich.edu.
