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Assistant Professor Department of Physiology

Email: brownda@ecu.edu

Mailing Address:
Brody School of Medicine
Department of Physiology
600 Moye Blvd.
Greenville, NC 27834

What causes cardiac arrhythmias? Why do heart cells die if they are deprived of oxygen? What can we do to decrease ischemia/reperfusion injury in the heart? My laboratory is interested in these broad questions.

Ischemic Heart Disease claims more human lives each year than any other single disease. The most common manifestations of ischemic heart disease are arrhythmia and myocardial infarction, yet the mechanisms underlying these phenomena have yet to be fully elucidated. Investigating these mechanisms and understanding how they are altered between health (i.e. with exercise) and disease (i.e. diabetes) is a goal of our research.

My laboratory focuses on cardiac electrophysiology, spanning the level of the intact heart down to isolated heart cells (myocytes) and further down to the powerhouses of the cell (mitochondria). A major question that we are interested in investigating is: How does the metabolic state of the heart influence the activity of cardiac ion channels, and vice-versa. There is increasingly strong evidence that the activity of cardiac ion channels can influence the susceptibility of the heart to arrhythmias, infarction, and mechanical dysfunction.

Assistant Professor (October 2008 – Present)
Department of Physiology
Brody School of Medicine
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC

Post-Doctoral Fellow (February 2006 – September 2008 )
Institute of Molecular Cardiobiology
Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Baltimore, MD
Mentor: Dr. Brian O’Rourke

Doctor of Philosophy (Integrative Physiology)
University of Colorado at Boulder; Boulder, CO 2005
Dissertation Title: “Myocardial ATP-sensitive Potassium Channels and Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury”.
Ph.D. Advisor: Dr. Russell L. Moore

Bachelor of Science (Exercise Science)
Virginia Tech; Blacksburg, VA 1999
Cum Laude
Minor: Chemistry

For a full list of Pubmed citations, click here.
Click here for free access to our recent review article on Exercise Cardioprotection.