Benjamin L. Prosser, PhD, an assistant professor of Physiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, will serve as the North American coordinator for a new, multi-institutional $6.5 million grant from the Leducq Foundation, aimed at better understanding the role the heart cell cytoskeleton plays in heart disease and finding new ways to treat it.  Researcher and transplant cardiologist Kenneth B. Margulies, MD, a professor of Medicine at Penn and CEMB Affiliate, is also a member of the consortium and is Prosser’s collaborator.  READ MORE

Microtubules in heart cells from a healthy patient (left) and from a patient with heart failure. The dense network of detyrosinated microtubules impedes the motion of the failing heart cell during the heart beat