Alexander Eichert was awarded the NIH F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the NHLBI which began on June 1, 2026.
Alexander received his Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from Stony Brook University.
Alexander is a doctoral candidate in Physiology in the Matthew Wolf Lab in the Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center.
We asked Alexander to tell us about his research and hopes for the future.
Tell us about your research: Our lab is interested in how cardiomyocytes, which are classically considered to be minimally proliferative, can be encouraged to re-enter the cell cycle. This is especially pertinent after cardiac injuries like a heart attack, where a large portion of myocytes die and are replaced by a stiff fibrotic scar that impedes contraction. While current literature heavily focuses on how we can make myocytes re-enter the cell cycle (including our lab), I am particularly interested in what makes these cycling cardiomyocytes unique. We’ve found that these cycling myocytes secrete additional/unique factors that seem to influence the myocardium’s response to various pathologies. Our recent interest and the subject of my fellowship is on growth differentiation factor 11 (GDF11). I’ve found that the loss of GDF11 from cycling myocytes is detrimental to the heart’s response after ischemic injury, causing significantly worsened cardiac function and increases in fibrosis. I’ve recently tied this to an acute change in the immune response because of GDF11 knockout. The goal of my project is to understand how GDF11 is mediated these effects through a cycling cardiomyocyte point-of-view.
What drives or motivates your scientific pursuits? I think I have always just been a really curious person, so not only being able to learn something new every day but potentially discover something new is pretty cool. Every day is kind of a new day (good or bad) and it keeps you on your toes for sure!
What are your future goals? I’m thinking I’ll try to stay in academia and maintain my focus in cardiovascular disease. My current thought is I might try to focus more on the cellular function of cardiomyocytes, since there’s still a lot to understand about how they function so differently from other cell types.