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Stuart Cook

Contact

Stuart.cook @ imperial.ac.uk

Website

http://www.csc.mrc.ac.uk

Biography

Qualified in medicine at Saint Bartholomew's, London in 1994 and completed a PhD at Imperial College in 2000. This was followed by a Wellcome Trust-funded Postdoctoral position at Harvard University, Boston (2000-2003) after which continued clinical training in cardiology. Awarded a UK Department of Health Clinician Scientist position and continued research activities alongside clinical training. Imperial College Senior Lecturer and MRC Clinical Sciences Centre Group Head in Molecular Cardiology (2006). Research interests include the molecular characterisation of myocardial phenotypes in rodents and man with a particular focus on cardiac hypertrophy and remodeling.

Research Summary

The molecular mechanisms controlling heart failure are poorly understood and are a major focus of the group. We have used integrated genetic and genomic studies to identify the genetic control points for thousands of genes in the rodent heart to begin to dissect these mechanisms. Human studies have focused on insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS1) associated phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) activities in heart and skeletal muscle from patients with diabetes or heart failure. Through these combined rodent and human studies we aim to identify robust candidates for disease pathogenesis with a view to developing new molecular insights and treatments for heart failure.

Activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) in heart samples from patients with left ventricular dysfunction (LVD) or type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) as compared to controls.

Publications

1. E Petretto, J Mangion, N Dickens, SA Cook, MK Kumaran, H Lu, J Fischer, H Maatz, V Kren, M Pravenec, N Hubner and TJ Aitman. Heritability and Tissue Specificity of Expression Quantitative Trait Loci. PLOS Genetics Oct 20;2(10).
2. Morresette M, Cook SA, Foo SY, McKoy G, Ashida N, Scherrer-Crosbie M, Li L, Matsui T, Brooks G, Rosensweig A. Myostatin regulates cardiomyocyte growth through modulation of Akt signalling. Circulation Research 2006. Jul 7;99(1):15-24
3. Cook SA, Aitman T, Naoumova RP. Heart disease and the insulin resistant patient. Nature Clinical Practice: Cardiovascular Medicine. 2005. May, 2(5):252-260
4. Cook SA, Novikov M, Ahn Y, Matsui T, Rosenzweig A. A20 is dynamically regulated in the heart and inhibits the hypertrophic response. Circulation 2003; 108(6):664-7
5. Cook SA and Rosenzweig A. DNA microarrays: Implications for Cardiovascular medicine. Circulation Research, 2002; 91:559-564

Last updated 10/19/2007.