J. Kevin Donahue, MD
Photo: J. Kevin Donahue
Elected 2009
J. Kevin Donahue, M.D., is Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. His primary research interests are the elucidation of mechanisms, and from that, the development of therapies for cardiac arrhythmias. As a means to that end, the Donahue lab has developed several gene transfer methods and created novel animal models of cardiac arrhythmias. The Donahue lab was first to show efficacy of gene therapy for a cardiac arrhythmia in a 12/2000 Nature Medicine publication documenting heart rate control in atrial fibrillation after atrioventricular nodal gene transfer of Gαi2. More recently, the lab demonstrated complete elimination of ventricular arrhythmias in a porcine healed myocardial infarction model after potassium channel gene transfer and transient elimination of atrial fibrillation after atrial gene transfer in animal models. Ongoing interests include the investigation of mechanisms for post-infarct ventricular arrhythmias and chronic atrial fibrillation, the development of improved gene delivery methods, and the use of these methods for arrhythmia gene therapy.