Brian Stauffer, MD, has worked at Denver Health Medical Center for 18 years and has been the chief of the Division of Cardiology for the past six. He is also the medical director of the Integrative Vascular Biology Laboratory (IVBL) and medical director of the CU Boulder Clinical Translational Research Center, as well as the co-founder of the Pediatric Cardiovascular Research Laboratory (PCRL). 

At Denver Health, he provides comprehensive cardiovascular care for a wide range of patients from different socio-economic backgrounds, many of whom are covered by public insurance programs or are uninsured.   

At the PCRL, Dr. Stauffer works with Kika Sucharov, PhD, and Shelley Miyamoto, MD, to study failing and non-failing hearts to better understand pediatric heart failure. With one of the largest biobanks in the world, they examine the differences in characteristics between groups to further advance the understanding of heart failure in children and adolescents.  

His journey into cardiac research and cardiovascular physiology began as an undergraduate student in 1988 at Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine and continued at the University of Colorado Boulder. At that time, there was no emphasis on sex as a biological variable. It wasn’t until 1999, while he was working with a molecular biologist who used several models that had sex-specific differences in heart failure that piqued his interest in sex differences research.  

“In the last 25 years, there has been a greater emphasis on studying sex differences,” says Dr. Stauffer. “For me, it has become a part of everything that I do. I look at sex differences from a research perspective because it leads you to additional questions that you would never have asked before. This approach also shows the next generation of graduate students that this needs to be an intrinsic part of their scientific inquiries.”  

As an early-career researcher, Dr. Stauffer received funding from the Ludeman Center to pursue research focused on sex-differences in blood vessel health that may be a responsible for differences in the development of heart attacks and strokes between men and women. This work stemmed from previous research done by the group at the IVBL, which revealed that middle-aged women have better blood vessel health than middle-aged men, suggesting that this may be the mechanism behind the delay in women developing heart attacks compared to men.  

“It has been more recently demonstrated that even though women may be delayed in getting coronary disease or heart failure compared to men, when they have their first event, it tends to be worse for them,” he says.  

Dr. Stauffer’s research group looked at several aspects of blood vessel health that contribute to the development of heart attacks and strokes. They also examined the impact of oral contraceptives in young women and hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal women on blood vessel health and the risk of blood clot formation. With the support of the Ludeman Center, they were able to present their findings that revealed the sex differences in circulating cells at a national conference in 2007. 

He works closely with the director of the IVBL lab, DrAL. Christopher DeSouza, to train undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Many of them are women who have been first authors or co-authors on some of their manuscripts. The PCRL has also maintained a racially and ethnically diverse research group primarily comprised of women. The deep respect and knowledge shared within these research groups is something he looks forward to each week. Plus, Dr. Stauffer says that having a diversity of research interests simply makes everything more fun. 

Throughout his career, Dr. Stauffer has prioritized the study of sex differences related to heart conditions and has been the recipient of national funding from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health.  

“I stayed in the academic environment because it afforded me a greater opportunity to engage in teaching and research,” he says. “And my goal with my research is to not leave groups behind. When we look at broader populations, we are more likely to identify things that make people different, which can lead to differences in the way we treat them.”