Michael Johnson
University of Utah, UT·Medicine & Clinical Research
Each year about 500,000 people in the United States have a cardiac arrest. Many are revived but later die in the hospital or suffer brain damage from poor blood flow to the brain.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
cardiac arrest
resuscitation
endovascular therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Determine how EPACC, a partly inflated, automatically controlled aortic balloon catheter, affects heart function and the rate of re-arrest during the first 24 hours after resuscitation in a pig model of cardiac arrest.
- Measure how EPACC changes blood flow to the brain and brain outcomes after cardiac arrest in pigs, including its effect on how much epinephrine is needed.
- Assess the effects of EPACC on organs below the aortic balloon, which receive less blood flow, during 24 hours of modeled post-arrest critical care in pigs.
More about the research
Epinephrine, the main drug used during resuscitation, helps restart the heart. Growing evidence suggests it may worsen brain outcomes, because it narrows blood vessels in the brain. Therapies are needed that raise blood flow to the heart and brain after the heart restarts while reducing the need for epinephrine.
Why it matters
Survivors of cardiac arrest often die later or suffer brain injury, and the standard drug, epinephrine, may worsen brain outcomes. If EPACC safely raises blood flow to the heart and brain while reducing epinephrine use, it could become a new therapy for post-arrest care. These pig studies would provide the data needed to decide on human clinical trials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ryan Huebinger
University of New Mexico, NM·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Build statistical models using a cardiac arrest registry to determine whether racial, ethnic and socioeconomic differences in post-arrest hospital care and outcomes arise between hospitals or within them.
Reggie Lee
University of South Florida, FL·Neuroscience
Determine how the enzyme SGK1 reduces brain blood flow after cardiac arrest in rodents, using two-photon microscopy and laser speckle contrast imaging, and identify blood-vessel signaling molecules with PCR, capillary immunoassay, and ELISA.
Maxim Mokin
University of South Florida, FL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether continuous bedside optical monitoring predicts outcomes after aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, measuring cerebral blood flow and an index of cerebrovascular autoregulation with pathlength resolved diffuse correlation spectroscopy throughout acute hospitalization.
The school
University of Utah: 58 labs on PI Pages, $789M a year on research, 366 research doctorates a year.
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