Capricor Therapeutics, Inc. announced the appointment of Deborah D. Ascheim, M.D., to the position of Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Ascheim, a heart failure cardiologist, has significant experience directing national and international clinical trials, funded by both the NIH and industry sponsors. She was most recently Professor of Health Policy and Medicine and was the director of the International Center for Health Outcomes and Innovation Research's Clinical Trial Unit at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Prior to her tenure at Mount Sinai, Dr. Ascheim was on faculty in the Department of Medicine and division of Cardiology at the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University. While at Mount Sinai and Columbia, she served as either principal investigator or co-principal investigator for numerous high impact cardiovascular trials, including the NIH supported Cardiothoracic Surgical trials Network data coordinating center. She has been the principal investigator of an NIH supported trial of stem cells in LVAD patients, as well as an NIH CTRIP grant to evaluate targeted gene therapy for the treatment of heart failure.