Innovator in Cardiology Andrew Marks, M.D., Honored at Amherst College 2009 Commencement

AMHERST, Mass. (May 24, 2009) – Among seven other pioneers receiving honorary degrees from Amherst College this year, Dr. Andrew Marks of Columbia University Medical Center was recognized during the school's 188th Commencement exercises held on the school’s New England campus.

Andrew Marks, M.D.

An accomplished researcher and an esteemed professor, Dr. Marks has "brought about breakthroughs in the understanding and treatment of heart disease and muscular dystrophy," Amherst cited as one of the primary reasons Dr. Marks was deserving of an honorary degree.

After studying biochemistry and English at Amherst, Marks earned his medical degree from Harvard and went on to work at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. His teaching career began at Mount Sinai in 1990. In 1997, he joined the faculty of Columbia, where he has since founded SPURS, the Summer Program for Under-Represented Students, and risen to chair of the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics.

Dr. Marks has also served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of Clinical Investigation and been invited to speak at countless medical and scientific conferences. He has received honors from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the American Heart Association—among other organizations—and is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and founder of International Academic Friends of Israel. Marks is the developer of the drug-eluting coronary stent now used in most angioplasties, and his most recent discovery, currently in clinical development, is a novel therapy for treating cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure and muscular dystrophy. It is based on fixing a "leak" he found in the ryanodine receptor/calcium-release channel required for muscle contraction.

As part of the ceremonies, Dr. Marks spoke to the approximately 420 members of Amherst’s Class of 2009, their families and friends and the college and Western Massachusetts communities in a series of conversations that were free and open to the public on Saturday, May 23. The schedule of discussions with the honorands is still available on the Amherst ommencement Web site.

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Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is now among the most selective medical schools in the country. CUMC is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and state and one of the largest in the country. For more information, please visit www.cumc.columbia.edu.