Evangelia Kranias: The Mother of Phospholamban.

Abstract

After a sheltered childhood, Evangelia (Litsa) Kranias defied her parents’ wishes and boarded a ship from Athens to the United States, having been accepted at the University of Chicago and cautioned that how she performed would determine whether other foreign undergraduates would be admitted. “When I think about it, I am amazed at the courage and determination of that 18-year-old Greek girl!,” says Kranias. “My mother wrote to me every other day and I did the same. She often said, ‘If we were to lay down our letters, they would form a bridge between Athens and New York.’” Kranias has kept that bridge intact throughout her career, directing the molecular cardiology group of the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens while maintaining multiple positions at the University of Cincinnati—Director of Cardiovascular Biology in the Department of Pharmacology and Cell Biophysics, codirector of the Cardiovascular Center of Excellence, and Hanna Professor of Cardiology. Evangelia Kranias Shortly after joining the faculty in Cincinnati, Kranias recognized the importance of the recently discovered PLN (phospholamban) molecule in the regulation of calcium cycling through the sarcoplasmic reticulum and in the overall regulation of cardiac function. Kranias and John Solaro soon provided the first evidence that PLN is phosphorylated in the intact heart in “fight or flight” situations.1 After generating a series of genetically altered mouse models, her laboratory revealed that, rather than stimulating contractility, PLN inhibits the calcium pump in the sarcoplasmic reticulum and this inhibition is relieved when the molecule is phosphorylated under β-agonist stimulation.2 Surprisingly, PLN-deficient mice exhibited enhanced myocardial performance without changes in heart rate, raising the possibility of PLN as a target to improve calcium cycling and improve function in patients with heart failure. In the clinical arena, Kranias’ laboratory showed that heart failure is associated with …