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April 2026: Undergraduate student, Liam Gannon, has been awarded the 2026 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award in Biochemistry for his work addressing how adhesion G-protein coupled receptors regulate cardiac function via calcium handling. This project was done in collaboration with Dr. Doug Tilley (Aging + Cardiovascular Discovery Center) and is sure to lead to exciting new discoveries. Congrats Liam!

March 2026: Undergraduate student, Jay Ragbirsingh, scores the lab a hat trick by being awarded a prestigious Diamond Research Scholarship to pursue an independent research project over the next year. His work aims to define the components and PKA interacting proteins within the lysosomal nanodomain and leverage this information to understand how PKA regulates local calcium signaling.

Publication Alert:

Check out our recent review article published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Aging, where we discuss the important roles of nitric oxide (NO) throughout the cardiovascular system and how declines in NO bioavailability with age contribute to poorer cardiovascular health and increased vulnerability to disease.

Adhikari H, Patel P, Javvaji N, Crabtree MJ, Simon JN. Declining nitric oxide bioavailability in cardiovascular aging: mechanistic insights and emerging interventions. J Cardiovasc Aging. 2025;5:20. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/jca.2025.14

December 2025: MD/PhD student, Hriju Adhikari, was awarded a two-year AHA predoctoral fellowship to study the role of oxidized PKA in cardiometabolic flexibility. Congrats Hriju!

November 2025: Students Hriju Adhikari & Namratha Javvaji presented their work in at the Society for Redox Biology & Medicine's annual conference in Washington D.C., and did not come home empty handed. Namratha was awarded the Young Investigator Award and Hriju took home a prize for Top Scoring Abstract. Fantastic work ladies!

Funding Alert:

September 2025: Excited to share that our lab has been awarded a new NIH R01 grant to investigate how lysosomal ion channels shape cardiomyocyte survival and resilience in ischemic heart disease. This project will focus on the calcium/proton-permeable channel TPC2, which we’ve found to be markedly upregulated after cardiac injury and linked to progressive heart failure. By uncovering how TPC2-driven ion release promotes cell death and maladaptive remodeling, we aim to identify new therapeutic strategies to protect the heart after myocardial infarction.

March 2025: Undergraduate student, Ali Hamed, was granted a prestigious Diamond Research Scholars award to carry out an independent research project over the next year. His work aims to define a novel lysosome-based cAMP/PKA nanodomain that governs ion channel activity and inter-organelle crosstalk.

March 2024: Undergraduate student, Namratha Javvaji, was granted a prestigious Diamond Research Scholars award to carry out an independent research project over the next year. Her work is aimed at studying the causal relationship between lysosomal pH dynamics and organellar function in the context of ischemic heart disease.

Funding Alert:

December 2023: Thrilled to announce a major funding boost from the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust, which is helping us uncover why oxidized PKA's cardioprotective effects are lost in chronic ischemic heart disease and what we can do, therapeutically, to restore them. Check out our research spotlight here and learn more about the types of work this amazing charitable trust supports.