Stanley Nattel advises trainees to find something they love to do and invest their energies in pursuing it
Dr. Stanley Nattel, MD, a renowned clinical-researcher from l'Université de Montréal and the director of the Electrophysiology Research Program at Montreal Heart Institute, is the 2025 Dr. E.R. Smith Lectureship in Cardiovascular Research recipient. He will present at the Tine Haworth Cardiovascular Research Day on April 29, 2025, in the Libin Lecture Theatre. Learn more here.
Nattel may have come from humble beginnings, but the clinician-researcher has risen to amongst the top in his field.
Nattel is the child of Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Canada in 1952 from Israel. His career has been motivated by his own desire to make a difference and inspired by his parents' ability to overcome adversity.
"My parents came with no money, just the shirts on their backs," says Nattel. "But my father was a brilliant man who earned his engineering degree at night while working full time to support his family. He eventually became president and general manager of a company in Quebec and did very well, but he certainly didn't have an easy life. My mother raised her three children with devotion and was the emotional anchor of our lives."
Nattel watched his parents learn new languages, adjust to Canadian culture and struggle to succeed financially in a new country. As he observed, he learned the values of hard work, determination and resilience.
In high school in the 1960s, Nattel excelled at math and science and had an insatiable desire to find the answers to questions. Those qualities inspired a career in medicine and research.
"In the 1960s, we wanted to save the world," says Nattel. "I liked people, and I thought I would find a career in medicine meaningful and enjoyable."
Education
Nattel received his MD, internal medicine and clinical pharmacology training at McGill University. He trained in clinical cardiology and research at Indiana University and basic research at the University of Pennsylvania.
His love of physiology and pharmacology and acute medicine motivated Nattel to specialize in the then-emerging field of electrophysiology, which is study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues, including heart cells.
"When I did my training in the 70s and 80s, it was the heyday of electrophysiology," says Nattel. "This area of cardiology had some of the most relevant and pressing clinical questions of the time."
Career
Nattel received his first faculty position in 1981 at McGill, where he managed a busy clinical and research schedule. In 1987, he moved to l'Université de Montréal and the Montreal Heart Institute, where he directed the Research Centre from 1990 to 2004.
His research career has been prolific, but Nattel says some of his most important work focused on the idea that fibrosis plays a key role in atrial fibrillation, the most common cardiac arrhythmia that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.
"Before our work, most of the people who worked in atrial fibrillation considered it only an electrical disturbance," says Nattel. "We showed that it's a much larger problem, involving complex biochemical, structural, and cellular changes."
His lab was also amongst the first to address complex clinical arrhythmia-inducing problems in animal models by reproducing the clinical conditions, studying the underlying mechanisms in those models and using the findings in human trials.
Nattel has authored more than 750 peer-reviewed papers (with an h-index of 160), is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the Royal Society of Canada, the American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society.
He has received numerous honours, including the Wilder-Penfield Prix du Québec in Biomedical Science, and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.
He is the editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, Associate Editor of Cardiovascular Research and a Section Editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He is also a member of the editorial boards of numerous other journals.
Nattel is a professor of Medicine and holds the Paul-David Chair in Cardiovascular Electrophysiology at l'Université de Montréal.
Nattel plans to continue his role as editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, a position he has held since 2010. He also continues to enjoy clinical medicine and although he is slowing down, his research lab is still actively studying two main areas.
These include looking at how mitochondria become dysfunctional in atrial fibrillation and how knowledge about their role may be harnessed to develop new treatments; and studying the involvement of inflammation in atrial fibrillation and how a specific class of molecules may help resolve inflammation and be used to treat the condition. He is also enjoying spending more time with his children and grandchildren who live in the United States, Europe and Israel.
He offers the following advice to trainees at the beginning of their careers.
"In my experience, desire and commitment are the two essential determinants of success," says Nattel. "It's not always the people who are more talented that are successful, so never give up on yourself. Find something that you love to do, invest your energies in pursuing it, know what you want, know what you believe and go for it."
