Michael A Laflamme

Dr. Michael Laflamme is the Robert McEwen Chair in Cardiac Regenerative Medicine at University Health Network and a Senior Scientist in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. After obtaining an undergraduate degree in Physics at Georgetown University, Dr. Laflamme completed the Medical Scientist (MD/PhD) Training Program at Emory University, where he studied the regulation of calcium homeostasis by beta-adrenergic signaling in adult ventricular cardiomyocytes. After residency in Anatomic Pathology and subspecialty training in Cardiovascular Pathology at the University of Washington Medical Center, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Charles Murry, investigating the role of exogenous and endogenous stem cells in myocardial repair.

His independent research career has been largely focused on the development of cell therapies based on human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), and his laboratory has made a number of important contributions in this area including 1) widely-used protocols to guide the differentiation of hESCs and induced pluripotent stem cells into cardiomyocytes or specialized cardiac subtypes (e.g. ventricular myocytes versus pacemaker cells), 2) the first proof-of-concept study showing that the transplantation of hESC-CMs can “remuscularize” scar tissue and improve left ventricular contractile function in rodent MI models, and 3) the first direct demonstration that grafts of hESC-CMs can electrically couple with host myocardium following transplantation in injured hearts. Dr. Laflamme has been the recipient of honors including the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology Young Investigator Award, the Perkins Coie Award for Discovery and the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy Outstanding New Investigator Award. He is also a board-certified physician in Anatomic Pathology and practices diagnostic Cardiovascular Pathology.