Milton Packer

Milton Packer (b. ca 1951) is an American cardiologist who is known for his clinical research concerning heart failure.

Early life and education Milton Packer was born in the United States to Holocaust survivors who were saved from the Vilna Ghetto by Karl Plagge. He grew up in Philadelphia, where his father worked as a tailor. He was politically active in the 1960s.

He earned his undergraduate degree at Pennsylvania State University in 1971 and his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia in 1973 Packer earned an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award in 2007 to support these efforts.

In 2015 he was appointed a distinguished scholar at the Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.

Research 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.

In 1986 he joined the Cardiac and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee at the FDA,

The PROFILE trial had negative results; it was terminated early in 1993 due to increased mortality in the drug arm of the trial. Packer was the lead author of the conference abstract in which topline results were presented. The abstract promised that data and analysis would be forthcoming in a future paper; as of 2001 no such paper had been published. Similarly, the REACH-1 trial had negative results and was terminated early, and the preliminary results were presented at a conference by Packer, with no full publication following as of 2001, leaving the field without insight into why the drug caused harm at the dosage given in that trial.

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. His research on the treatment of heart failure led to him being awarded the Lewis Katz lifetime achievement award in cardiovascular research.