Dr Alexander Lyon

Alexander Lyon is a Senior Lecturer in Cardiology at Imperial College London and a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital.

Dr Lyon studied Medicine at Oxford University where he took a 1st Class degree in Physiological Sciences in 1995, achieving second place in the final honours school. After qualifying from the John Radcliffe Medical School in 1998, he trained as a junior doctor in Cardiology in Oxford, the Royal Brompton Hospital and Sydney, Australia.

He joined the Cardiac Medicine research group of Professor Sian Harding and Professor Philip Poole-Wilson, where he studied the influence of cardiac gene therapy upon ventricular arrhythmia generation. He was awarded a MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship in 2005. He completed his PhD in 2008, and spent his first postdoctoral year studying the spatiotemporal patterns of mitochondrial function in the lab of Fadi Akar and Roger Hajjar at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. He was appointed Walport Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology at Imperial College in 2008, and completed his speciality training at St. Marys Hospital and the Royal Brompton Hospital.

He was appointed a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Cardiologist in January 2012.

His clinical interests are in the field of heart failure, chemotherapy cardiomyopathy and Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, and he is the theme leader for heart failure research in the NIHR-funded Biomedical Research Unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital.

His main research interests include:

1. Abnormal calcium physiology in heart failure.
2. Mechanisms of ventricular arrhythmias in heart failure.
3. Biological therapies for heart failure – these include gene therapy, stem cell therapy and myocardial tissue engineering.
4. Spatio-temporal patterns of mitochondrial dysfunction in the intact heart and novel imaging of myocardial mitochondrial function.
5. Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy and the influence of stress and high catecholamine levels on cardiac function.
6. Chemotherapy cardiomyopathy and the cardiac complications of anti-cancer therapies.

Recent academic awards include the inaugural Bernard and Joan Marshall Young Investigator Prize from the British Society for Cardiovascular Research (2010), British Cardiovascular Society Young Investigator Competition Winner (Basic Sciences) (2009), Royal Society of Medicine Cardiology Section President’s Medal Winner (2007), Medical Research Society Raftery Prize in Cardiovascular Sciences Winner (2008), European Meeting of International Society of Heart Research Best Scientific Poster Prize (2008). He has presented at numerous national and international meetings in the field of cardiac calcium pathophysiology and gene therapy in heart failure, mitochondrial function in heart failure, and Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy.

He has raised over £3million in scientifc research funding and published research papers in the myocardial biology of heart failure relating to his research interests.

His first two PhD students were awarded their theses in 2011/12, and he is currently the supervisor for four Imperial College PhD students.