Newswise — Jon Kobashigawa, M.D., director of Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute’s Heart Transplant Program and an internationally-recognized leader in the care of patients with advanced heart failure, has been named the inaugural holder of the DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Endowed Chair in Heart Transplantation Medicine.
The endowed chair, presented at a ceremony at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Feb. 23, will help fund Kobashigawa’s research into new treatments for people with advanced heart failure as well as those who are heart transplant patients. The chair is funded by Los Angeles philanthropist Don Levin and named in honor of his friend, Thomas D. Gordon, senior vice president, Cedars-Sinai Medical Delivery Network.
"Three exceptional men are elevated by this gift. Dr. Kobashigawa is a scientist of the first order. Don Levin is easily one of the most generous and self-effacing philanthropists in the Cedars-Sinai family. And Tom Gordon is a gifted and genuine leader who gives inspiration and encouragement to all of us who have the good fortune to know him,” said Thomas M. Priselac, Cedars-Sinai’s president and CEO.
“The DSL/Thomas D. Gordon Endowed Chair in Heart Transplantation Medicine celebrates the friendship between Don Levin and Tom Gordon by enabling Dr. Kobashigawa to continue his vital efforts to improve the quality of life as well as the life expectancy for some of our sickest patients,” said Mark S. Siegel, chairman of the Cedars-Sinai Board of Directors.
Kobashigawa, a past president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, has authored more than 200 scientific manuscripts. Currently, he is leading a number of major multi-national clinical research studies. His has developed groundbreaking medical protocols, such as customized anti-rejection medications for transplant recipients. Dr. Kobashigawa and his colleagues in the California Heart Center developed the nation’s largest heart transplant program prior to joining the Cedars-Sinai Medical Care Foundation and the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute earlier this year.
At the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Kobashigawa serves as director of the Heart Transplant Program,, director of advanced heart disease and as the institute’s associate director for clinical affairs. Long recognized as a national leader, the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute has been growing rapidly over recent years. After Eduardo Marbán, M.D., Ph.D., former chief of cardiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, joined Cedars-Sinai as the institute’s director in 2007, the addition of heart rhythm expert Sumeet S. Chugh, M.D. and hypertension specialist Ronald Victor, M.D., rounded out the Institute’s senior leadership. In June 2009, Marbán and his team completed the first procedure in which a patient’s own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells that were then injected back into the patient’s heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle in a heart that had been injured by a heart attack. Other groundbreaking programs include research by P.K Shah, M.D., who has developed novel gene therapy approaches to protect against heart attacks and strokes, and the unified approach to women’s heart problems pioneered by Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., director of the Women’s Heart Center.
About the Cedars-Sinai Heart InstituteThe Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute is internationally recognized for outstanding heart care built on decades of innovation and research. From cardiac imaging and advanced diagnostics to surgical repair of complex heart problems to the training of the heart specialists of tomorrow and leading-edge research that is deepening medical knowledge and practice, the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute is known around the world forexcellence and innovations.
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