UB pediatrics professor Steven Lipshultz named American Heart Association Distinguished Scientist

BUFFALO, N.Y. —  Steven E. Lipshultz, MD, professor of pediatrics at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo, has been named an American Heart Association (AHA) Distinguished Scientist for 2025.

The designation was created in 2003 to honor members of the AHA and American Stroke Association who have made extraordinary contributions to cardiovascular, stroke and brain health research. Lipshultz will receive the award during the AHA Scientific Sessions Nov. 7-10 in New Orleans.

One of seven Distinguished Scientists being honored this year, Lipshultz, who is also an AHA Fellow, has led advances in subspecialties of pediatric cardiology that have helped improve the lives of children with chronic diseases.

“For Dr. Lipshultz, this extremely well-deserved honor speaks not just to the clinical breakthroughs in the space of pediatric cardiology and cardio-oncology he has achieved but also to the many lives of children around the world that he has improved and even saved, thanks to his groundbreaking research and scientific advances,” says Benny L. Joyner, MD, A. Conger Goodyear Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UB.

An expert in pediatric cardiomyopathy

For more than four decades, Lipshultz has led landmark National Institutes of Health studies on the causes and treatment of pediatric cardiomyopathy, among the leading causes of cardiac death in children worldwide. He founded and leads the network of U.S. and Canadian centers for the NIH-funded Pediatric Cardiomyopathy Registry (PCMR) to better understand pediatric cardiomyopathies. PCMR-supported studies have been credited with improving patient outcomes by 50%.

This year, Lipshultz’s PCMR research team, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, received an AHA “Outstanding Research Award in Pediatric Cardiology” for discovering the genetic basis of myocarditis in children, the leading cause of sudden death in Americans under 20 years of age. 

Lipshultz chairs the medical advisory board and scientific review committee, and has been chief medical officer of the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation Inc., a national nonprofit organization he helped found that is dedicated to finding causes and cures for pediatric cardiomyopathy. He has chaired the cardiomyopathy working group for the World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease project supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and received a congressional commendation for leading a coalition task force to improve the outcomes for children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Established field of pediatric cardio-oncology

Credited with having helped establish the field of pediatric cardio-oncology, he founded Cardio-Oncology, the field’s first indexed journal. With colleagues, Lipshultz continues to lead the pre-clinical and clinical studies and randomized clinical trials that have validated dexrazoxane to protect the hearts of children with cancer from harmful side effects of cancer treatment.

In the 1980s, Lipshultz and colleagues’ seminal work documented the cardiac issues that pediatric cancer survivors suffer later in life, as well as during treatment. His ongoing research and trials have led to global use of the first cardio-protective therapy for children receiving heart-damaging anthracycline chemotherapy.

That work earned him the International Cardio-Oncology Society’s highest individual award, the Thomas L. Force Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award this year.

Lipshultz has chaired and served on advisory committees, leadership teams and participated in national and international research collaborations that have led to data-driven improvements in clinical care, patient outcomes and public policy, especially related to pediatric cardiovascular diseases and cardiomyopathy.

From 2018-23, Lipshultz was the A. Conger Goodyear Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics in the Jacobs School, during which time he also served as the pediatric chief-of-service at Kaleida Health, medical director for pediatrics services business development at John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital and president of UBMD Pediatrics.

He previously led the Children’s Research Center of Michigan and was pediatrician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital of Michigan until 2017. He also was specialist-in-chief, pediatrics, at the Detroit Medical Center, and president of University Pediatricians and held positions at Wayne State University School of Medicine, the University of Rochester and the University of Miami.

Lipshultz earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. He earned his MD from Dartmouth Medical School and completed a residency in pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and a fellowship in pediatric cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital, part of Harvard Medical School, where he was also a research fellow of the AHA-Bugher Foundation Center for Molecular Biology in the Cardiovascular System and remained on the faculty.