Richard P. Lifton

My laboratory has been identifying genes that contribute to development of vascular disease in humans and determining how these mutations alter normal physiology to result in clinical disease. Many of the common diseases encountered in clinical medicine, such as coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and renal disease, are known to have strong genetic components, indicating that inheritance of genetic variants contributes to their occurrence. With the advent of new tools in molecular genetics we now have the capability to identify these susceptibility loci. This identification can provide new insight into disease pathophysiology, provide new tests capable of identifying individuals with inherited susceptibility at pre-clinical stages, and ultimately lead to new therapies tailored to individuals with underlying primary abnormalities.