Kevin Whitehead, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Cardiology

	Contact	Patient Appts:(801) 585-7676 Administrative: (801)585-1686 Fax: (801) 581-7735 Email Dr. Whitehead
	Office	Division of Cardiology University of Utah School of Medicine, Room 4A154
Education	Medical School: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA Residency: Internal Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, CANADA Fellowship:Cardiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Clinical:	Echocardiography, Adult Congenital Heart Disease, General Cardiology
Specialty/Research Interest:	Developmental Biology (Vascular Development). My laboratory is focused on understanding the relationships of arteries, veins, and nerves in embryonic vascular development. Arteries and veins develop as parallel, yet distinct vascular beds and eventually follow a similar course to developing nerves in many instances. At early stages, before physiologic and morphologic differences have become apparent, arteries and veins can be distinguished from one another on the basis of unique molecular markers. Pathways defining arterial and venous development are slowly being defined in a variety of model organisms. The intersection of arteriovenous development and the developing nervous system is of particular interest, and is uniquely manifest in a human hereditary vascular malformation syndrome, Cerebral Cavernous Malformation (CCM). I am interested in understanding the embryonic developmental role of genes causing CCM using gene targeting in mice.
Selected Publications:	Whitehead KJ, Plummer NW, Adams JA, Marchuk DA, and Li DY. Ccm1 is required for arterial morphogenesis: implications for the etiology of human cavernous malformations. Development 131(6):1437-1448 (2004).