Milton Packer (b. ca 1951) is an American cardiologist who is known for his clinical research concerning heart failure.
Milton Packer was born in the United States to Holocaust survivors who were saved from the Vilna ghetto by Karl Plagge.
[1] He completed his residency at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, where Edmund Sonnenblick was working, and a fellowship in cardiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where Richard Gorlin was conducting research.
[2] Columbia has recruited him with an invitation to build a clinical and research program in heart failure, and he in turn recruited faculty who had a strong interest in both; members of the group could come up with a hypothesis about heart failure while treating a patient, and that doctor or another member of the team would begin researching it the same day.
[5] Along with practicing cardiology, he spent the first part of his career doing small clinical research studies trying to better understand the pathology of heart failure.
[3] "The pivotal event for me was my appointment as a member of the cardiorenal advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration.
[10][11] The success of the PARADIGM-HF trial was a great satisfaction for him, as it validated the neurohormonal hypothesis; an earlier effort with omapatrilat had failed due to side effects caused by the drug candidate.