Gene Researcher to Deliver UB’s Rahn Lecture

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The researcher who discovered the genes that control the development of heart-muscle and skeletal-muscle cells will deliver the ninth annual Hermann Rahn Memorial Lecture at 4 p.m. Oct. 12 in Butler Auditorium in Farber Hall on the UB South Campus.

The lecture will be given by Eric N. Olson, chair of the Department of Molecular Biology in the Hamon Center for Basic Cancer Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. His topic will be "Transcriptional Control of Cardiac Hypertrophy."

Olson has gained international recognition for his seminal studies that helped define the molecular events that determine the destiny of a cell.

In his most recent genetic research, he used immunosuppressant drugs to prevent the formation of cardiac hypertrophy (an enlarged heart) in genetically engineered mice that ordinarily would develop cardiac hypertrophy, heart failure and death. His data suggest a potentially novel therapeutic strategy to be used in the treatment of cardiac hypertrophy and heart failure.

The UB lecture, presented by the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is named for the late Hermann Rahn, former SUNY Distinguished Professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at UB. Rahn was a president of the American Physiological Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.