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About Our Speakers
Robert A. Kloner,MD, PhD
Chief Science Officer and Director of Cardiovascular Research
Huntington Medical Research Institutes (HMRI).
Dr. Robert A. Kloner serves as Professor of Medicine (Clinical Scholar) at Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California (USC) and is an attending cardiologist at Los Angeles County/ USC Medical Center. Prior to accepting an appointment at HMRI, Dr. Kloner served as Director of Research of the Heart Institute of Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles from 1987 to December 2014. He has run nationally and internationally known cardiovascular research programs for over 40 years, training dozens of medical scientists, and collaborating with scores of physician scientists, numerous research institutions and medical industries world-wide.
In the 1970s, Dr. Kloner received his BS and MD in the Honors Program in Medical Education at Northwestern University, and his PhD in Experimental Pathology from Northwestern University Medical School where he trained in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Jennings. Dr. Kloner is a member of Alpha Omega Alpha honor society. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts (1975-1978). Additional training included clinical and research fellowships in medicine and cardiology (with Eugene Braunwald, MD, and Peter Maroko, MD) at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He served as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and was an attending cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (1979-1984). He was the recipient of an Established Investigator Award of the American Heart Association (AHA), he is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, an Inaugural Fellow of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the AHA, and Dr. Kloner was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation. In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiology Society.
Dr. Kloner has made major contributions to the understanding and treatment of heart disease, receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association (AHA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Defense (DOD) and numerous corporations and private foundations. He performed some of the first studies on and helped define the concepts of no reflow in the heart (at Northwestern University), stunned myocardium, remote ischemic preconditioning, and triggers of cardiovascular events. He has made major contributions to the understanding of pathophysiology of heart attack (at Northwestern, Harvard University, Wayne State University, and USC); treatments for heart attack (at Northwestern, Harvard and USC); triggers of cardiovascular events (USC); studies on high blood pressure and heart failure (USC); the effect of toxins like alcohol, cocaine, and pollution on the heart; stem cell therapy for the heart (USC); the intersection between sexual dysfunction and cardiovascular disease (USC). His current work at HMRI, funded by the NIH and Tobacco Related Disease Research Program studies the effects of e-cigarettes on the cardiovascular system. Dr. Kloner is also collaborating with a bio-engineering group (cell phone app) for noninvasive assessment of heart function. A frequent contributor to the medical and scientific press, Dr. Kloner has authored or co-authored 750 original papers in peer-reviewed journals, 221 chapters or monographs, and 538 abstracts (as of 2021). Dr. Kloner is the author and editor of 18 medical texts including: Cardiovascular Trials Reviews (10 editions); The Guide to Cardiology (3 editions); Stunned Myocardium; Ischemic Preconditioning; VIAGRA; and Heart Disease and Erectile Dysfunction. In addition, he has written and published three medical science fiction novels.
Among his editorial responsibilities, Dr. Kloner served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics (2009-2019). He has served as Guest Editor of Circulation. He is on the editorial boards of American Journal of Cardiology, Basic Research in Cardiology, International Journal of Impotence Research, Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Regenerative Medicine, and Life Sciences. Among his many career distinctions, Dr. Kloner has been listed in Who’s Who in America, The Best Doctors in America and in 2002 was cited by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited scientific authors. He has an H-index of 106 and is cited over 47,000 times as per the Web of Science. Dr. Kloner is a frequent lecturer at major scientific symposia including the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, and Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics Meetings, and he has lectured at most major academic medical centers in the United States. He has taught at both the Keck School of Medicine at USC and lectured at Caltech.
Jianru Shi, PhD
Research Associate Professor, Cardiovascular Research
Huntington Medical Research Institutes (HMRI).
Dr. Jianru Shi is a molecular biologist at HMRI Cardiovascular Research Institute.Dr. Shi received her MD from the Henan Medical University in 1996 and her PhD in cardiovascular pathology from the Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China in 2004. Dr. Shi pursued her postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in 2005. She was an instructor at Harvard Medical School & Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, USA in 2010.
Dr. Shi obtained training in redox regulation and inflammation in cardiovascular disease during her graduate studies. After graduation, she investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of primary amyloid cardiomyopathy and the role of inflammation in metabolic regulation within the cardiovascular system.
Her interests in translational research led her to join Dr. Kloner’s group in 2012 to study the mechanisms of cardioprotection. Her research focused on the cardioprotective effects of drug, hypothermia and stem cell on myocardial infarction. She has observed that a mitochondrial-targeting peptide (Bendavia) improved expression of mitochondrial energy metabolism genes and prevented myocardial matrix remodeling in the noninfarcted border zone of infarcted hearts and she presented her work in American Heart Association Scientific Sessions and Experimental Biology 2013, 2014 and 2016. Dr. Shi is now working on cardioprotective agents to preserve organ function and improve survival during experimental hemorrhagic shock. In 2017, she presented her work in American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.
Wangde Dai, MD
Research Associate Professor, Cardiovascular Research
Huntington Medical Research Institutes (HMRI).
Dr. Wangde Dai earned his MD from Shanghai Medical University, Shanghai, P.R. of China in September 1999. Due to his strong interest in basic medical science research as a postdoctoral research fellow, he joined the vascular research laboratory of Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California from 2000 to 2002. During that time period, his research project involved isolation and culture of blood vessel smooth muscle cell and endothelial cell, transfected these cells with GFP, tPA and NOS genes, then seeded these cultured genetic engineered cells on to a prosthetic graft, which were finally implanted to the abdominal aorta in rabbits under the supervision of Drs. Hong Yu and Vincent L. Rowe. The goal of this research was to investigate whether gene transfer with tPA and NOS could prevent the neointimal hyperplasia in the implanted prosthetic graft in vivo.
From June 2002 to 2014, Dr. Dai worked in Dr. Robert Kloner’s laboratory in the Heart Institute of Good Samaritan Hospital. Under the mentorship of Dr. Kloner, his research interest mainly focused on seeking cardioprotective strategies using both acute and chronic myocardial infarction in rats. These strategies included intramyocardial cell transplantation and collagen as well as heart tissue derived matrix implantation in chronic rat myocardial infarction model and post-ischemia hypothermia therapy in ischemia/reperfusion rat model.
He also tested cardioprotective effects of various kind of drugs, such as Acetaminophen, Olmesartan, a mitochondria-targeting peptide Bendavia, etc. in rat myocardial infarct model. He has published 44 peer-reviewed scientific papers and 6 book chapters as an author or a co-author.
In 2015, Dr. Dai, along with Dr. Kloner’s Cardiovascular Research team, joined the Huntington Medical Research Institutes. His research will continue focusing on cardioprotective strategies, searching to benefit myocardial infarction patients, as well as regenerative cardiology.
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