1980-1990
The Cardiothoracic Research Laboratory (CTRL) was established in 1980. Located in a small, retrofitted room in a building on Prescott Street behind Crawford Long Hospital (renamed Emory University Hospital Midtown in 2009), the lab was part of the recruitment package offered to Dr. Robert Guyton to relocate to Emory University from MGH at Harvard University.
With financial support from the Carlyle Fraser Heart Center at Crawford Long, the CTRL quickly developed into a productive cardiac surgical research program that included surgical residents and fellows as research assistants. Funded by an NIH R01 grant to Dr. Guyton, the lab's initial focus was myocardial protection and recovery during cardiac surgery.
1990-2009
Following his appointment to chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery in 1990, Dr. Guyton recruited Dr. Jakob Vinten-Johansen from Wake Forest University to lead the CTRL (Dr. Guyton has remained involved with the CTRL up the present day). Dr. Vinten-Johansen's research concentrated on cardioplegia solutions for optimal myocardial protection, with specific attention given to adenocaine. The lab also began investigating ischemia-reperfusion injury after coronary artery revascularization, and the subsequent use of controlled reperfusion, pre- and post-conditioning, and pharmacological agents as techniques to inhibit this injury.
A few years later, the CTRL moved to a larger facility on West Peachtree Street where it remained until 2013, and funding continued to be received from the Heart Center, NIH grants, and industry contracts. Research began to shift towards the development of new surgical techniques, coronary artery bypass grafting, and testing new bio prosthetic valves. This more translational focus also led to the formation of a collaborative biomedical engineering research center with Georgia Tech, with Dr. Guyton serving as co-director.
2010-the present
Dr. Vinten-Johansen retired in 2010, and was replaced as director of the CTRL by David Lefer, PhD, who came from Albert Einstein Medical School and was an expert in myocardial protection. He was accompanied by Dr. John Calvert. Dr. Lefer left Emory for LSU-New Orleans in 2013, though Dr. Calvert remained and has continued his investigations at the CTRL of the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease.
From 2010-2020, Emory began to emerge as an important center in the advancement for innovative transcatheter heart valve therapies, with significant efforts being made in both the surgery and interventional cardiology arenas. Dr. Muralidhar Padala was recruited upon completing his PhD from Georgia Tech in 2010, and entrusted with cultivating the lab's potential for advancing cardiovascular translational research in the broad area of valvular heart disease and interventions.
In the years since, the CTRL team's membership has grown and investigations of mitral valve disease and heart failure have increased, attracting a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in engineering, physiology, surgery, and molecular cardiology to Atlanta.
In addition to the unwavering support of the Carlyle Fraser Heart Center, the CTRL is currently funded by NIH R01 grants, multiple fellowships from the American Heart Association, contracts with medtech companies, and has a history of support from the Coulter and the Leducq foundations as well as the Georgia Research Alliance. The program has now relocated to a 25,000 square foot facility constructed for translational biomedical research within a mile from Emory University Hospital Midtown.