ANDREW R. MARKS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Professor and Chair, Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Wu Professor of Molecular Cardiology (in Medicine)
Founding Director, Wu Center for Molecular Cardiology
Founding Director, Summer Program for Underrepresented Students (SPURS)
Andrew Marks, co-organizer of the Columbia University COVID-19 Virtual Symposium
Andrew R. Marks, MD received his undergraduate degree from Amherst College (with honors in both Biology and English), and his MD from Harvard Medical School. Following an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), he was a post-doctoral fellow in molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School, and then a clinical cardiology fellow at the MGH. He is board certified in internal medicine and in cardiology.
Dr. Marks is Chair and Professor of the Physiology and Cellular Biophysics Department at Columbia University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), National Academy of Medicine (2004), and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005). From 2002-2007 Dr. Marks was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He received the Doctor of Science Honoris Causa from Amherst College (2009), and de l’Université de Montpellier (2016), the ASCI Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award (2010), the Pasarow Foundation Award for Cardiovascular Research (2011), the Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Award (2011), Glorney-Raisbeck Award from NY Academy of Medicine (2016), Columbia University Dean’s Award for Excellence in promoting Diversity (2017), the Naranjan Dhalla Award for Innovative Investigators in Cardiovascular Sciences, International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (2018).
In 2002 he founded the Summer Program for Under-represented Students (SPURS) at Columbia. SPURS provides mentored research training at Columbia University for under-represented and economically disadvantaged students primarily from the New York City public colleges and universities.
Dr. Marks’ has published over 200 articles in which he has contributed new understandings of fundamental mechanisms that control muscle contraction, heart function, lymphocyte activation, and cognitive function. He has discovered novel causes of human diseases including heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, and neurodegenerative disorders. He has developed novel treatments for human diseases including: 1) the first drug eluting coronary artery stent developed based on Dr. Marks’ research; and 2) a new class of drugs called Rycal® one of which is being tested at the NIH in patients with a form of muscular dystrophy.
Dr. Marks’ identification of the mechanism of action of rapamycin, inhibition of vascular smooth muscle proliferation and migration, lead to the development of the first drug-eluting stent (coated with rapamycin) for treatment of coronary artery disease. The drug eluting stents have been used in thousands of patients and have substantially reduced the incidence of in-stent restenosis.
In 1989 Dr. Marks cloned the type 1 ryanodine receptor/calcium release channel (required for excitation-contraction coupling in skeletal muscle) and has spent his career working to define it’s regulation in health and disease. (Timeline of RyR discoveries).
In 2000, he discovered that “leaky” intracellular calcium release channels (ryanodine receptors, RyR) contribute to heart failure, fatal cardiac arrhythmias, and subsequently showed that leaky RyR channels contribute to impaired exercise capacity in muscular dystrophy, and cognitive and behavioral abnormalities in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Alzheimer’s Disease.
In 2005 Dr. Marks developed a new class of drugs called Rycal® that fix leaky RyR channels and treat heart, muscle and brain disorders in animal models. A Rycal® is now being tested at the NIH in patients with a genetic form of muscular dystrophy called RyR1-related myopathy (RyR1-RM) caused by mutations in RyR channels that make them leak calcium and impair their muscle function.
In 2014 Dr. Marks reported the high-resolution structure of the mammalian ryanodine receptor. His research has contributed new understandings of fundamental mechanisms that control muscle contraction, heart function, lymphocyte activation, and cognitive function.
The focus of the current research in the Marks laboratory is the continued elucidation of structural determinants of RyR channel function in normal and diseased states using cryogenic electron microscopy combined with cellular, functional and animal studies. The overarching theme of the lab is exploration of causes of human diseases driven by oxidative overload and defective calcium signaling including: heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, neurodegenerative disorders, muscular dystrophies, diabetes and aging. The goal is to develop new understandings of normal and pathologic physiology and discover novel therapeutics.
HONORS
1995 American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI)
1999 Association of American Physicians (AAP)
2002-2007 Editor-in-Chief - The Journal of Clinical Investigation
2004 Member, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences
2005 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2005 Member, National Academy of Sciences, USA
2005 AHA,Basic Research Prize
2009 Doctor of Science, Honoris causa, Amherst College
2010 Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award, ASCI
2011 Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Award in Cardiovascular Disease Research
2011 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging
2015 Ulf von Euler lecturer Karolinska Institute
2016 Glorney-Raisbeck Award, NY Academy of Medicine
2016 Docteur Honoris causa, de l’Université de Montpellier