Lothar A. Blatter

Biography

Lothar A. Blatter, MD, Dr Med, is a professor of molecular biophysics and physiology at Rush. He received his MD degree and the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Bern in Switzerland. He completed postdoctoral training in physiology and pharmacology at the University of Bern, Switzerland, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and the University of Maryland. He held faculty positions at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, Loyola University Chicago and now at Rush University. He was recognized as an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association. He has authored over 150 research articles and book chapters. Since 1993 he has maintained an active, independent and extramurally funded (NIH, AHA and Leducq foundation) research program and is actively engaged in graduate and medical teaching. His research focuses on mechanisms of excitation-contraction coupling and cellular calcium signaling in healthy and diseased hearts, using high-resolution imaging techniques, electrophysiological methods and molecular biology approaches.

Research Interest

Research areas include Calcium regulation and signaling in the heart and the cardiovascular system, characterization of ion transporters and channels, electrophysiology, excitation-contraction coupling, mitochondrial calcium signaling and energetics, excitation-transcription coupling, and changes in calcium signaling in arrhythmia, hypertrophy and heart failure.