Benoit Bruneau’s lab is broadly interested in understanding how genes are turned on and off during human development, and how this process is controlled during the formation of the heart in the embryo. Specifically, his team is investigating how errors in this process cause congenital heart disease. They use mouse models and human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to unravel the transcription factor networks that regulate sets of genes critical for heart development.
Disease Areas
Areas of Expertise
Lab Focus
Research Impact
Research in Bruneau’s lab is important for understanding basic concepts in gene regulation and how they are dysregulated in disease. They demonstrated interactions between cardiac transcription factors, which provided new insights into the tight regulation of gene cohorts and has had immediate implications in understanding how mutations in these genes cause similar heart defects. These findings are broadly impactful as they apply to any set of transcription factors, in any cell type. In addition, his team’s work on 3D genome organization resolved several long-standing questions in biology applicable to all cells in the body.
Professional Titles
Director, Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease
Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes
William H. Younger Chair in Cardiovascular Research, Gladstone Institutes
Professor, Department of Pediatrics, UC San Francisco
Bio
Benoit G. Bruneau, PhD, is the director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes. He is also a professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco.
Originally from Canada, Bruneau earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a doctorate in Physiology at the University of Ottawa. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Genetics at Harvard University Medical School in the lab of Jonathan and Christine Seidman. Before coming to Gladstone, Bruneau led a lab at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and was an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics at the University of Toronto.
Holder of the William H. Younger Chair in Cardiovascular Research, he has distinguished himself internationally as a leading figure in the field of epigenetics and gene regulation, particularly as it relates to cardiac biology and disease. He also serves as an editor for the journal Development and sits on the editorial board of Genes & Development.
How Did You Get Your Start In Science?
“My third-year undergraduate developmental biology class had a hands-on Axolotl embryology lab. We did classic fate-map experiments, and beating heart explants. I was hooked.”
Honors and Awards
2012 American Heart Association (Fellow)
2010 Established Investigator Award (5 years), Lawrence J. and Florence A. DeGeorge Charitable Trust/American Heart Association
2003 Premier’s Research Excellence Award, Canada
2001 New Investigator Award, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada/Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Publications
Contact
Benoit Bruneau
Email
415.734.2708
Nicole Greenberg
Administrative Assistant
415.734.4829
Email