Sylvia Evans

Email: syevans@ucsd.edu

Dr. Sylvia Evans is a Professor of Pharmacology at the UC San Diego School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.  She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of British Columbia in Canada, and did a postdoc at the Salk Institute in La Jolla before coming to UCSD.

The focus of her lab is to define genetic pathways underlying heart development and to apply that understanding to both congenital and adult heart disease.  A basic understanding of heart development is key toward understanding congenital heart disease. Building a functioning heart requires the specification and interaction of a number of cell lineages of distinct function.  Her lab is trying to understand the stepwise process by which mesodermal precursors become committed to cardiac progenitors, and then specified to become distinct cardiac lineages.  We are also studying several stem cell populations which give rise to distinct cardiovascular lineages. We utilize mouse as a model system.