Robert Lederman, M.D.

Dr. Robert Lederman is a practicing interventional cardiologist with experience in early phase human device clinical protocols who has worked for over a decade at the NHLBI intramural research program developing new non-surgical devices and image guidance to treat cardiovascular disease. Now a tenured investigator, Dr. Lederman leads a team of adult and pediatric interventional cardiologists, engineers, and physicists that has developed completely new approaches to cardiac structural intervention oriented around real-time MRI and X-ray. His team has introduced MRI hemodynamic catheterization into standard clinical practice at the NIH Clinical Center. Through CRADA partnerships, image guidance technology has been developed into commercial clinical prototypes, including MRI and X-ray co-registration to enhance conventional interventional procedures, and including a real-time MRI user interface now in routine clinical use.

Dr. Lederman's group and collaborators have conceived and translated several completely new transcatheter structural heart interventional procedures into patients, including transcaval access for TAVR, mitral cerclage annuloplasty, intentional laceration of the anterior mitral leaflet to prevent LVOT obstruction during TMVR (LAMPOON) and to release Mitraclips (ELASTACLIP), intentional laceration of the aortic leaflets to prevent coronary obstruction after TAVR (BASILICA), pledget assisted suture tricuspid annuloplasty (PASTA), transcatheter superior cavopulmonary (Glenn) shunt, and others not yet reported. The team collaborates closely with luminary cardiologists across the country to bring solutions to patients without good clinical options. They have shepherded these projects from conception, to prototyping, to in vivo testing, to compassionate human use, to systematic IDE investigation in patients, and in some cases to broad dissemination and education. They have a pipeline of new techniques, devices, and clinical research protocols under development to address right- and left-ventricular failure, tricuspid and mitral valve regurgitation, bioprosthetic failure, and congenital heart disease.

Robert Lederman received his B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University in 1986 and his M.D. from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in 1990. He was a resident and chief resident in medicine at CWRU. He completed fellowships in cardiology (University of California, San Francisco, 1994), interventional cardiology (University of Michigan, 1996), and peripheral vascular intervention (Duke University, 1997). He was assistant professor in interventional cardiology at University of Michigan (1998-2000). He joined the NHLBI as an Investigator in the Cardiovascular Branch in 2000 to begin work in interventional cardiovascular MRI and was named a Senior Investigator (with tenure) in 2008. He has authored or coauthored more than 200 papers or book chapters. Dr. Lederman is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Intervention, and a member of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging. He has over two dozen patents issued or pending for his work. His lab has created over a dozen new catheter-based treatments or devices for structural heart disease.