Marlene Rabinovitch, MD
Cardiopulmonary Research Program
Department of Pediatrics
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, California

Presentation Title
New Pathways to Pulmonary Hypertension and New Opportunities for Therapy (Summary of Presentation)

Dr. Rabinovitch is a Dwight and Vera Dunlevie Professor of Pediatric Cardiology and Research Director of the Vera Moulton Wall Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is a Graduate Faculty in both the Cancer Biology and the Developmental Biology Programs at this same institution.  In 1977, Dr. Rabinovitch spent one year as an Instructor in Pediatrics and three more years as an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.  From 1982-1988, she was an Associate Professor in Pediatrics and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, moving to full Professor in 1988. In 1994, she became a full Professor in the Department of Medicine at this same institution.  From 1982-2002, Dr. Rabinovitch was a Senior Associate in Pediatrics and Pathology at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto; serving as Acting Director of Cardiovascular Research Institute from 1986-1988 and Director of Cardiovascular Research at its Research Institute from 1988-2002.

Dr. Rabinovitch earned her medical degree from McGill University in 1967, completed a one-year internship and one-year residency in Pediatrics at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver.  Between 1974 and 1977, Dr. Rabinovitch was a Clinical Fellow in Pediatric Cardiology for one year at Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine and one year at Children’s Hospital Medical Center at Harvard Medical School.  She then was a Research Fellow in Pediatric Cardiology for another year at Harvard Medical School.

Co-author of one hundred and thirty-four peer-reviewed publications and ninety-two book chapters and requested articles, Dr. Rabinovitch currently holds National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in the areas of chronic lung injury after premature birth, cardiovascular development and disease, pulmonary vascular disease, and pulmonary hypertension.  She has been involved as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator on twenty-eight research grants, is currently working on two other grants and has two other NIH research grants pending.  She has received numerous honors and awards’ including the 2006 American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist Award and has been a member or chair of NIH and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) research committees and task forces.  She has served in a scientific advisory capacity to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in the US and Gairdner Foundation in Canada.  Dr. Rabinovitch also sits on the Editorial Board of major journals and has been Associate Editor of Circulation Research.  She has been a visiting professor or invited lecturer throughout Europe and North America, as well as in Asia and South America.

Dr. Rabinovitch’s major research interests are the following: pulmonary circulation in congenital heart disease;  pulmonary hypertension; molecular mechanisms regulating vascular endothelial and smooth muscle cell-extracellular matrix interactions, and how these relate to novel enzymes, endogenous vascular elastase, and chymase, to fibronectin and tenascin-C, and to a microtubule-associated protein that regulates mRNA translation; and gene regulation, gene therapy and transgenic mouse models of altered cardiovascular development and disease.