Sonnet Jonker, Ph.D., is a professor with tenure in Cardiovascular Medicine at the OHSU school of Medicine, and is a scientist focused on perinatal cardiovascular development.

The Jonker Lab is focused on understanding how the prenatal environment determines the structure and function of the heart at birth, and how that might affect cardiovascular health for life. Of particular interest are what signals control how the heart decides how many cardiomyocytes - the muscle cells that perform the pumping work of the heart - to grow when the fetus faces challenges before birth. The lab is also interested in determining how cardiomyocyte growth interacts with coronary vascular growth, because coronary vascular disease is a significant cause of death and disability in adulthood. If we learn how heart growth is regulated in the perinatal period, we can design therapies to help babies grow stronger hearts. This could benefit individuals born prematurely, with intrauterine growth restriction, with intrauterine challenges such as anemia, and those with congenital heart disease.

Dr. Jonker joined OHSU in 2009 after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Iowa.

Complete list of published work on PubMed.