_Professor Michael D Schneider, Professor of Cardiology, presents his Inaugural Lecture on: “Death and Regeneration: Cardiac Muscle Cell Number as a Therapeutic Target.” _

In the Chair: Professor Anthony Newman Taylor
Vote of Thanks: Professor Stephen Smith

Professor Schneider’s research concerns the problem of cardiac muscle cell number, in its fundamental and applied dimensions. The capacity of mammals’ heart tissue to undergo self-repair is meagre by comparison to that of newts or certain fish, thwarting functional recovery from heart attacks and other forms of human heart disease. Consequently, the overarching theme in Professor Schneider’s lab has been to dissect genetic circuits that impose the irreversible block to cell cycling in post-mitotic ventricular muscle, couple cardiac stress signals to cardiac cell death, and drive cardiac muscle cell formation in the embryo or pluripotent cells. The goal is not just fundamental discoveries in cardiac biology, but also their conversion over time into testable theories of cardiac pathogenesis and workable remedies. Heart-derived progenitor cells for cardiac repair, directed differentiation of embryonic stem cells, and novel mediators of cardiomyocyte apoptosis offer three vignettes of the potential therapeutic targets.

Professor Schneider was recruited in September 2007 as the incoming Head of Cardiovascular Science for the National Heart and Lung Institute. He was educated at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke, followed by research training at the NIH under Nobel Laureate Marshall Nirenberg. In 1984, he was appointed to the nascent program in cardiac molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, ultimately becoming Professor of Medicine, Molecular & Cellular Biology, and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Development, and inaugural recipient of the M. D. Anderson Foundation Chair. Professor Schneider was for a decade Associate Editor of Circulation, the world’s leading cardiovascular journal. He is well-recognized on both sides of the Atlantic, most recently as recipient of the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Heart Association Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences and of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.