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Dr. Christopher P. Cannon is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He is a senior investigator of the Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction (TIMI) Study Group, and over the past two decades has been the principal investigator for more than 10 international clinical trials in the area of heart attacks and prevention. Recent trials include PROVE IT-TIMI 22, which showed that "lower is better" for cholesterol and changed international guidelines, and CLARITY-TIMI 28 which showed that giving heart attack patients clopidogrel can prevent future heart attacks.

Dr. Cannon graduated from Yale College and earned his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. After completing his internal medicine residency at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, he came to Boston for cardiology fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He has been on staff as a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's for 20 years. He has recently been cited as one of the "Best Doctors in Boston" in Boston Magazine.

Dr. Cannon has published more than 500 original articles, reviews, editorials, book chapters, and electronic publications in the field of heart attacks and cardiovascular prevention. His research is published in journals including Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and the New England Journal of Medicine. He is editor-in-chief of a journal Critical Pathways in Cardiology and a book series for physicians, Contemporary Cardiology, which has published more than 40 books. He is author or editor of 8 books, including The New Heart Disease Handbook. Dr. Cannon is frequently quoted in the press, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post. He is editor-in-chief of the American College of Cardiology's website Cardiosource (www.Cardiosource.com), and an editor for the website for patients, www.CardioSmart.org.  

Dr. Cannon has received numerous awards including the Alfred Steiner Research Award, Upjohn Achievement in Research Award, and Robert F. Loeb Award for Excellence in Clinical Medicine. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association, and the American College of Cardiology. He serves on the American Heart Association's Get With the Guidelines (GWTG) Steering Committee and is chairman of American College of Cardiology's ACTION Registry-GWTG registry. He is the principal investigator of several ongoing clinical trials, including IMPROVE IT which is an 18,000 patient trial evaluating patients the benefit of lowering of LDL cholesterol to even lower levels than the currently revised guidelines (<70 mg/dl) using a new type of cholesterol-lowering medication, ezetimibe in addition to statins.