Director of the University of Utah’s Nora Eccles Harrison CVRTI, and Presidential Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine
Dr. Robin Shaw is the Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of TikkunLev Therapeutics. Robin and his team discovered cBIN1, TikkunLev’s core therapeutic target for heart failure and developed the company’s novel gene therapy program. Additionally, Dr. Shaw is the Director of the University of Utah’s Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI), and Presidential Endowed Chair and Professor of Medicine. His clinical interest is patients with cardiovascular disease including heart failure.
Dr. Shaw earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University, and his medical degree and doctorate in Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. He received his Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease training at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where he remained on the faculty until mid-career as an Investigator at the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute. In 2013 he moved to the University of California Los Angeles and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center until 2019 when he joined the University of Utah and CVRTI.
The Shaw Laboratory is focused on basic myocardial biology. Their work defined the paradigm of Targeted Delivery which describes how the cytoskeleton delivers membrane proteins directly to their functional membrane subdomains and why there is less delivery in failing hearts. In the process, the Lab discovered and named two new proteins, GJA1-20k and cBIN1. Both proteins have fundamental roles in organizing the internal architecture of heart muscle cells and have important translational implications in the treatment of arrhythmia and chronic heart failure.
Dr. Shaw’s is passionate about developing the next generation of academic physicians and scientists. Since 2019, the CVRTI has recruited new members to house a record number of faculty investigators and their labs (18 labs with over 160 institute trainees and personnel), reached new heights publication number and impact level, and quadrupled its overall annual NIH funding ($20M annual grant funding in 2024). In its 40,000 sq ft, the CVRTI presently is the largest freestanding collection of cardiac muscle biology, metabolism, electrophysiology and vascular researchers in the United States. Among the translational programs being developed in the CVRTI are gene therapy solutions for heart failure and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, completing a bench to bedside continuum that is much needed for patients worldwide.