| Dr. Newton-Cheh is an Assistant
Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical
School and a cardiologist at the Massachusetts
General Hospital. He is a complex trait
geneticist and cardiovascular epidemiologist.
The Newton-Cheh laboratory is focused on
the study of hypertension, sudden cardiac
death and drug cardiotoxicity. We are leveraging
the rapid growth of human genetics:
• to identify DNA sequence variants
in genes that contribute to these common
diseases
• to translate these genetic findings
to an improved understanding of human
physiology through patient-oriented research
and
• to define the role of genetic
variants, alongside other clinical risk
factors, in risk prediction at the population
level
QT interval and sudden cardiac
death
Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a common cardiovascular
disease that claims 300,000 lives annually
in the US and has been shown to be influenced
by genetic factors. Prolongation of the
electrocardiographic QT interval is a risk
factor for sudden cardiac death in the general
population and is a life-threatening complication
of scores of medications, some of which
have had to be pulled from the market. We
have identified novel genes and DNA sequence
variants that contribute to variability
of the QT interval. We play leadership roles,
along with close collaborators, in international
consortia studying blood pressure, including
QTGEN (Newton-Cheh et al, Nature Genetics
2009) and the QT Interval International
Consortium of Genome-wide Association Studies—QT-IGC.
Blood pressure
Increasing blood pressure has a continuous
and graded contribution to the population
burden of stroke, heart failure myocardial
infarction, and chronic kidney disease.
Elevated blood pressure (hypertension) affects
an estimated 1 billion people world-wide.
Blood pressure (BP) is a complex trait with
multiple environmental and genetic influences.
Blood pressure is highly heritable, but
to date the genetic causes of variation
in blood pressure in the general population
have been poorly defined. We have identified
blood biomarkers and common genetic variants
that contribute to blood pressure and hypertension.
We have assumed leadership roles, along
with several close collaborators, in international
consortia studying blood pressure, including
Global BPgen (Newton-Cheh et al, Nature
Genetics 2009) and the International Consortium
of Blood Pressure Genome-wide Association
Studies—ICBP-GWAS).
Collaborations
To define the role of genetic variation
in the general population requires the study
of tens of thousands of individuals. We
enjoy close collaborations with investigators
in Boston, across the US and in Finland,
Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the
United Kingdom.
Dr. Newton-Cheh is on the faculty of the
Center for Human Genetic Research and the
Cardiovascular Research Center, where he
co-directs the Human Cardiovascular Genetics
Program, both of Massachusetts General Hospital
and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Newton-Cheh
is a staff physician in the Heart Failure
and Cardiac Transplantation Center at the
Massachusetts General Hospital. He receives
support from the NIH, the Doris Duke Charitable
Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
Dr. Newton-Cheh earned a BA from Dartmouth
College in 1991 and an MD from Columbia
University College of Physicians and Surgeons
in 1996. From 1996 to 2002, he trained in
internal medicine and cardiology and served
as chief medical resident at the Massachusetts
General Hospital. He completed a postdoctoral
fellowship in complex trait genetics at
the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT with
Joel N. Hirschhorn, MD, PhD and in cardiovascular
epidemiology at the Framingham Heart Study
with Christopher J. O’Donnell, MD,
MPH from 2002 to 2007. He obtained a Master
of Public Health from the Harvard School
of Public Health in 2004. |
