Dr. Ron Victor: Making a Difference in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

Dr. Ron Victor is Director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Hypertension, Associate Director of Clinical Research and holds the Burns and Allen Chair in Cardiology Research at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. He is board certified in internal medicine with a subspecialty in cardiovascular diseases.

In this interview we talk with Dr. Victor about his research into a Nitric Oxide donor that will potentially aid Duchenne muscle recovery.

Dr.Victor has been a collaborator and friend of Coalition Duchenne and is truly making a difference for all those with Duchenne. Dr. Victor kindly acted as an intermediary for our cardiac stem cell initiative with Cedars-Sinai and Dr. Eduardo Marbán and he is an important part of the groundbreaking Hope Duchenne trial that will test Capricor Therapeutic’s cardiac cell therapy in boys and young men with Duchenne for the first time.

Dr. Victor's other research interests include obesity-related hypertension, cocaine-induced cardiovascular toxicity, cyclosporine-induced hypertension, and metabolic modulation of adrenergic receptor signaling.

Dr. Victor has been awarded numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and other organizations in his studies of heart disease. He has published more than 180 articles and book chapters in peer reviewed publications and is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Hypertension, American Journal of Cardiology, the Journal of Hypertension and the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.

Dr. Victor graduated summa cum laude with distinction, Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi from Cornell University and earned his medical degree from Tulane University. He then completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles and a cardiology fellowship at Duke University, as well as a special cardiovascular research fellowship at the University of Iowa. He then completed a visiting fellowship in clinical neurophysiology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.