The Aromolaran Laboratory

The Aromolaran Laboratory focuses on elucidating how normal cardiac electrical and biophysical properties are altered in obesity and associated pathologies (diabetes, inflammation and lipotoxicity).

Obesity is an important contributor to the increased risk of supraventricular arrhythmia incidence and mortality, suggesting that the obesity epidemic poses a significant public health problem, with over one-third of the world population being either overweight or obese. An important goal of my laboratory is to identify and validate novel pathways in the setting of metabolic disorders that will improve our knowledge of rational development of dietary and therapeutic interventions. Specifically, we focus on adverse remodeling of major cardiac ionic mechanisms including the delayed rectifier K channels which play a critical role in cardiac repolarization. The Aromolaran lab utilizes state-of-the-art electrophysiological, optical, biochemical, and molecular techniques, as well as cardiomyocytes and more recently macrophages.