Dr. Joseph C. Wu is a distinguished cardiovascular scientist and clinician who serves as Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and holds the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professorship in Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University. A dual MD/PhD, he received his medical degree from Yale University and completed his residency and cardiology fellowship at UCLA through the highly competitive STAR program. He earned his PhD in Molecular & Medical Pharmacology under the guidance of the late Dr. Sam Sanjiv Gambhir, developing expertise in molecular imaging techniques that would later inform his groundbreaking research. Since establishing his laboratory at Stanford in 2004, Dr. Wu has become a leading authority in cardiovascular medicine, with specialized clinical expertise in adult congenital heart disease and advanced cardiovascular imaging modalities.
Dr. Wu's pioneering research laboratory has transformed cardiovascular science through the innovative application of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to model heart disease and accelerate therapeutic discovery. His team developed the groundbreaking "clinical trial in a dish" concept, enabling patient-specific drug testing using cardiomyocytes derived from iPSCs to personalize cardiovascular treatment approaches. With over 650 publications and an impressive H-index of 143 on Google Scholar, his work has earned recognition as he has been consistently named among the top 0.1% of highly cited researchers by Web of Science for seven consecutive years from 2018 to 2024. His research program strategically integrates genomics, stem cell biology, molecular imaging, and artificial intelligence to uncover disease mechanisms and develop precision medicine approaches that have substantially advanced the understanding and treatment of cardiovascular conditions.
Dr. Wu has profoundly shaped the cardiovascular research landscape through his extensive mentorship of over 60 trainees who have become principal investigators across the United States and internationally. He provides critical leadership through numerous high-impact roles including chair of the American Heart Association Research Committee and member of the FDA's Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee. His editorial appointments span prestigious journals such as Cardiovascular Research and Nature Reviews Cardiology, where he serves as Senior Advising Editor and Advisory Board member respectively. Looking forward, Dr. Wu continues to champion the translation of iPSC technology into clinical practice with a visionary goal that within the next 10-20 years, patients will receive truly personalized medicine tailored at the cellular level through surrogate iPS cell testing, fundamentally transforming the current "hit-or-miss" approach to cardiovascular pharmacotherapy.
