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Andrew Robert Marks, MD (born February 22, 1955) is an American cardiologist and molecular biologist. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Founding Director of the Clyde and Helen Wu Center for Molecular Cardiology and Wu Professor of Medicine.

Biography

Dr. Marks grew up in New York and attended Amherst College and Harvard Medical School where he received an MD in 1980. Following an internship and residency in internal medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital he was a post-doctoral fellow in molecular genetics at HMS and then a clinical cardiology fellow at the MGH. In 1987 Dr. Marks joined the faculty of the Cardiology Division at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. In 1990 he moved to Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In 1997 he was recruited to head molecular cardiology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.

Andrew Marks has dedicated his career to understanding fundamental biological processes and translating these new understandings into therapies for patients. In the mid-1990s he identified the mechanism by which the drug rapamycin inhibits vascular smooth muscle proliferation and migration Vascular_smooth_muscle. This discovery was the basis for the development of the first drug-eluting stent(DES) (coated with rapamycin) approved for patient use in 2003 for treatment of coronary artery disease, substantially reducing the incidence of in-stent restenosis Restenosis.

Over the past 25 years a major focus of his work has been elucidating the role of intracellular calcium in regulating fundamental cellular processes, including cardiac and skeletal muscle contraction, cognitive function, and glucose metabolism.

Dr. Marks discovered and developed in his laboratory a new class of small molecules Rycals® that target leaky ryanodine receptor channels and in pre-clinical studies effectively treat cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, muscular dystrophy and PTSD.

Dr. Marks is chair of the SAB of ARMGO Pharma, Inc., a company he founded in 2006 to develop novel therapeutics for heart, muscle and CNS diseases. Dr. Marks is the inventor on multiple patents and one of the leading translational researchers.

In 2001 Dr. Marks founded the Summer Program for Under-Represented Students (SPURS) at Columbia. In 2002 Dr. Marks founded International Academic Friends of Israel (IAFI), a not-for-profit organization devoted to promoting and supporting the free and open exchange of ideas.

Awards and Honors

1995	American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) 1999	Association of American Physicians (AAP)

2002-2007	Editor-in-Chief - The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JC)

2004	Member, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2005	Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS)

2005	Member, National Academy of Sciences, USA (NAS)

2005	AHA, Basic Research Prize (AHA)

2009	Doctor of Science, Honoris causa, Amherst College (DS)

2010	Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award, ASCI

2011	Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Award in Cardiovascular Disease Research (CDR) 2011 	Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging (1)

2015     Ulf von Euler lecturer Karolinska Institute (UVE)

External links

Marks lab web site http://www.markslab.columbia.edu/index.php.html