Mark Mercola

Biography

Mark Mercola, Ph.D., is a Professor in Sanford-Burnham’s Development, Aging, and Regeneration Program, and Program Director of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Training Program. His research focus is directed at discovering new therapeutics for heart disease and cancer. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California Los Angeles, and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Department of Microbiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, and was on the faculty of Harvard for over a decade before joining the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute. Dr. Mercola is an acknowledged leader in the field of tissue interactions and signaling molecules that control stem cell differentiation and heart formation. His current efforts are focused on discovering novel cellular targets for the development of drugs that would enhance myocardial regeneration and protection after ischemic or other injury. Dr. Mercola co-founded the drug screening center at Sanford-Burnham, and employs high-throughput screening to identify molecules that can block heart failure and restore heart-muscle function. He also holds an appointment as Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at University of California San Diego, and is the founder of ChemRegen. Inc., a San Diego biotech company focused on stem cell biology and drug development and EpikaBio, a Palo Alto start-up that is commercializing a biological therapeutic for preserving heart function after myocardial infarction. He is a recipient of the prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health given for an outstanding record for scientific achievement.

Research Interest

Our lab seeks to enable new treatments for heart disease and cancer, both of which remain major causes of mortality and morbidity despite intense research efforts. For heart disease, our emphases are on maintaining contractility and stimulating regeneration during heart failure. Some of our recent advances include the discovery of microRNAs that impair cardiac function during failure, and the demonstration that inhibiting one particular microRNA using a therapeutic RNA molecule can halt the progression of heart failure symptoms in a mouse model. Another example is a small molecule that directs cardiac progenitor cells to form new heart muscle cells. For cancer, our focus has been on developing small molecules that target the control of cell division. One example is a highly potent small molecule that targets a single protein to simultaneously stabilize p53 and inhibit Wnt/β-catenin signaling, and has promising effects against colon cancer in an animal model.