Åsa Gustafsson is a Professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the Director of the Division of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases. Dr. Gustafsson is interested in understanding the molecular pathways that regulate the life and death of cardiac myocytes. Activation of cell death pathways is a common occurrence in cardiovascular disease and contributes to the development of heart failure. Her research is focused on elucidating pathways involved in regulating mitochondrial function and degradation in myocardial cells. She is also interested in alternative mechanisms of mitochondrial quality control in cells. Defects in these pathways lead to the accumulation of aberrant mitochondria and loss of cardiac myocytes. Her lab utilizes molecular and genetic approaches to identify and perturb specific regulators of mitochondrial function and autophagy in mice and cells. Dr. Gustafsson joined the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in October 2009. Prior to coming to UCSD, she was an Assistant Professor at San Diego State University. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from the Department of Pharmacology at UCSD in 2001. Her postdoctoral training was done at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla with Dr. Roberta Gottlieb. For her contributions to cardiovascular research, she was awarded the ISHR Outstanding Investigator Award in 2014. She is also an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association and a Fellow of the International Society for Heart Research. She is the President-Elect of the International Society for Heart Research.
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