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Ira S. Cohen

Ira Cohen
Ira S.
Cohen
M.D., Ph.D.
Leading Professor, Physiology & Biophysics;
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Professor of Medicine Director of Institute for Molecular Cardiology
ira.cohen@stonybrook.edu

Dr. Cohen is investigating electrical and mechanical regeneration of cardiac function. Cohen's lab generated a biological pacemaker in the canine ventricle using human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) transfected with a pacemaker gene. Now, they are investigating hMSC based therapies for other arrhythmias. For mechanical regeneration, they developed a novel approach to enhance cardiac differentiation of hMSCs as well as a means to track them in vivo using quantum dot nanotechnology. The lab is also studying cardiac stem cells and has entered into a collaboration to study human embryonic stem cells to determine which stem cell type can optimally regenerate electrical and mechanical function in the heart.

Select Publications: 

Potapova I.A., Doronin S.V., Kelly, D.J., Rosen A.B., Schuldt A.J.T., Lu Z., Kochupura P.V., Robinson R.B., Rosen M.R., Brink P.R., Gaudette G.R., and Cohen I.S. (2008) Enhanced Recovery of Mechanical Function in the Canine Heart by Seeding an Extracellular Matrix Patch with Mesenchymal Stem Cells Committed to a Cardiac Lineage Am.J. Physiol. (Heart and Circulatory Physiology) in press.

Rosen, A.B., Kelly, D.J., Schuldt, A.J.T., Lu, J., Potapova, I.A., Doronin, S.V., Robichaud, K.J., Robinson, R.B., Rosen, M.R., Brink, P.R., Gaudette, G.R. and Cohen, I.S. (2007). Finding fluorescent needles in the cardiac haystack: Tracking human mesenchymal stem cells labeled with quantum dots for quantitative in vivo 3-D fluorescence analysis. Stem Cells 25, 2128-2138.

Potapova, I., Plotnikov, A., Lu, Z., Danilo, P., Jr., Valiunas, V., Qu, J., Doronin, S., Zuckerman, J., Shlapakova, I.N., Gao, J., Pan, Z., Herron, A.J., Robinson, R.B., Brink, P.R., Rosen, M.R. and Cohen, I.S. (2004). Human mesenchymal stem cells as a gene delivery system to create cardiac pacemakers. Circ. Res. 94, 952-959.