BME7900 Seminar - Benjamin Prosser, PhD

Description

We welcome Dr. Benjamin Prosser from the University of Pennsylvania as our next guest speaker. He is an Assistant Professor of Physiology and the Associate Director of the Pennsylvania Muscle Institute. The Cytoskeleton in Cardiac Mechanics and Mechanobiology Abstract: The Prosser lab interrogates the forces of the heart – the mechanisms that control how a heart cell generates force, and how force itself feeds back to regulate cell function and form. Work from the last several years has defined the contribution of the cardiomyocyte cytoskeleton to the mechanical properties of heart muscle cells in health and heart disease. We find that microtubules provide a viscoelastic resistance to cardiomyocyte motion, and that profound, mechanical stress-induced alterations to the microtubule network contribute to elevated myocardial stiffness and impaired function in heart failure (Robison et al., Science 2016; Chen et al., Nat Med 2018; Caporizzo et al., Circulation 2020; Chen and Salomon, Circ Res 2020). We have also identified a complex interplay between microtubules and intermediate filaments that modulates the architecture and mechanical properties of the cytoskeleton, as well as ensures nuclear homeostasis. Disruption in this balance of cytoskeletal forces leads to a marked collapse of nuclear integrity and compromised genome organization (Heffler et al., Circ Res 2020). Together, our work highlights the fundamental role of microtubules and intermediate filaments in cardiac mechanics and mechanobiology, sheds new light on novel myopathic mechanisms, and pinpoints a promising new therapeutic target for the treatment of heart failure. Bio: Dr. Prosser received his B.S. in Biomechanics from Wake Forest University in 2005. He then earned his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2009, where he studied muscle electrophysiology in the lab of Martin Schneider. Dr. Prosser completed his post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Cardiology with Jon Lederer at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute in 2013, where he was awarded the Outstanding Post-Doctoral Scholar Award for his work on cardiomyocyte mechanosignaling. Dr. Prosser started his own group at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in 2014, where he is now an Assistant Professor of Physiology and the Associate Director of the historic Pennsylvania Muscle Institute. The Prosser lab focuses on the mechanobiology of the heart – the mechanisms that regulate the ability of the heart cell to generate force, and how external forces in turn feedback to influence myocyte physiology and pathology. In recognition of the lab’s early work, Dr. Prosser was named the Outstanding Early Career Investigator by the American Heart Association and the Outstanding Young Investigator of the Penn Perelman School of Medicine in 2017. Starting in January of 2021, Dr. Prosser will serve as Lead Coordinator of a Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence, an international research consortium focused on the role of the cytoskeleton in cardiac health and disease.