Christopher Glembotski, PhD, a renowned researcher in cardiovascular disease with a wide-range of accomplishments as a scientist, educator and leader, is the inaugural director of the Translational Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix; the associate dean for Research; and a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.
Prior to joining the College of Medicine – Phoenix in 2020, Dr. Glembotski served as the director of the San Diego State University (SDSU) Heart Institute and was a distinguished professor of biology. Dr. Glembotski has an extensive research background, including more than $35 million in grants during his time at SDSU. He has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1983.
His research centers around the area of molecular cardiology, with a focus on identifying new therapeutics for treating ischemic and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies.
Dr. Glembotski has been recognized as an educator and researcher with several accolades, including the American Heart Association Established Investigator Award, the Albert W. Johnson Research Lectureship Award and Distinguished Professor of Biology in 2019 — SDSU’s highest research honor.
Dr. Glembotski earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles. He continued his studies at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular physiology and moved to his first faculty position as professor of pharmacology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia before relocating to San Diego to become director of the SDSU Heart Institute.
Dr. Glembotski’s research focuses on discovering proteostasis-based therapeutics to treat heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and metabolic diseases. This approach is the result of our years of focusing on mechanisms of heart disease. We develop gene- and small molecule-based therapeutics targeted toward enhancing proteome integrity. Our most recent research has expanded beyond heart disease to other pathologies caused by dysregulated proteostasis.