Steven Houser: the beat goes on.

Abstract

During 36 years at Temple University in Philadelphia, Steven Houser has been a leader in advancing scientific understanding of heart function. All along, he’s been driven by a desire to understand his father’s fatal heart disease, and to contribute important insights to help future patients. Steven Houser Houser and his collaborators—along with others in the field, he is quick to note—have shed light on numerous fundamental questions about how calcium regulates the beating of cardiomyocytes, including elucidating the details of calcium-induced calcium release.1,2 His research is probing calcium-dependent signaling pathways, aberrations in the hypertrophic, failing, or post-myocardial infarction heart,3–6 factors related to myocyte turnover,7 and potential treatment strategies including gene and stem cell therapy. Houser’s lab recently demonstrated that cortical bone-derived stem cells may be superior to cardiac stem cells in regenerating heart tissue after MI.8 Houser, 63, director of the Cardiovascular Research Center and chair of physiology at Temple, tells Circulation Research he’s never afraid to jump into a scientific argument9 and help inform the debate. His strategy is always fair and careful experimentation, with an emphasis on reproducible findings. “I think the results from my group have stood the test of time,” he says. “That’s one of the things I’m proudest of—that our work can be repeated.” I grew up in New Jersey, in a little town called Magnolia, about 10 miles from Philadelphia, in suburban housing built primarily for soldiers returning after World War II. My dad had been in the service. [He] was a working guy. Mom stayed home, tried to keep me in line. My dad worked for a company called Western Electric. He was a wireman. My mom ended up going to college when I started high school. To help pay my way through college, …