Rajan Sah, MD, PhD – Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Endowed Professor of Cardiology

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Rajan Sah has been appointed the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Endowed Professor of Cardiology at WashU Medicine.

He exemplifies the qualities this endowed professorship recognizes, including outstanding translational research, clinical excellence, and transformative leadership in innovation and scientific discovery.

Dr. Sah completed his MD and PhD in physiology and biophysics at the University of Toronto. He underwent residency training in internal medicine through the Medical Research Track at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell/Memorial Sloan Kettering, followed by a cardiovascular medicine fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. He then completed advanced postdoctoral research training at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute laboratory of Dr. David Clapham at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sah joined WashU in 2018 and is currently a tenured Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology, as well as Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology.

As an exceptional physician-scientist, Dr. Sah’s research focuses on ion channel biology, mechanosensing, and cardiometabolic disease. His work established the LRRC8/SWELL1 ion channel complex as a central regulator of metabolic signaling, vascular function, and platelet activation, bridging fundamental ion channel biophysics to translation and drug discovery. Dr. Sah’s academic and commercialization efforts have generated over $17 million in total research and development funding since joining WashU, supported by multiple NIH R01 grants, a VA Merit award, and NIH SBIR/R44 grants. His high-impact publications have appeared in premier journals, including Nature Cell Biology, Nature Communications, Blood, and Science Advances.

In addition to his academic research, Dr. Sah co-founded Senseion Therapeutics, Inc., a biotechnology company dedicated to developing first-in-class small-molecule LRRC8 modulators to treat type 2 diabetes, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, and thrombotic vascular disease. Beyond his bench-to-bedside translational success, Dr. Sah is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and continues to actively serve as an attending clinical cardiologist. He is deeply committed to educating the next generation of physician-scientists through his teaching and leadership roles in the Division of Cardiology’s T32 training program.