The risk of heart failure following myocardial infarction is higher in diabetic patients than nondiabetic patients. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), a key downstream molecule of insulin-phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-Akt signaling pathway, plays an important role in cardioprotection. However, the role of cardiac mTOR in ischemic injury in metabolic syndrome has not been well defined. To address this question, we studied the effect of overexpressing cardiac mTOR on cardiac function following ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) in mice with high-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity. In this study, we used transgenic mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of mTOR (mTOR-Tg) as reported previously. mTOR-Tg and WT mice at 6 weeks old were fed HFD (60% fat by calories) ad libitum for 14 weeks. Control mTOR-Tg and WT mice were fed a normal chow diet (NCD). At 14 weeks after HFD, glucose and insulin tolerance tests demonstrated that HFD generated glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in both mTOR-Tg (n=20) and WT (n=24) mice. Body weight (BW) and heart weight (HW) were significantly higher in HFD mice than SCD mice (p<0.001 for BW in both strains; p<0.001 and p<0.01 for HW/tibia length, WT and mTOR-Tg, respectively) but there was no difference in BW or HW between HFD-mTOR-Tg and HFD-WT mice. Hearts from all four groups were subjected to global I/R (20 min ischemia, 40 min reperfusion) in the ex vivo Langendorff perfusion model. Baseline left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP) was higher in HFD mice than NCD mice in both strains [185.8 ± 10.7 vs. 143.6 ± 5.0 mmHg, HFD-WT (n=11) vs. NCD-WT (n=10) mice, p<0.01; 178.6 ± 10.1 vs. 135.0 ± 6.3, HFD-mTOR-Tg (n=8) vs. NCD-mTOR-Tg (n=11) mice, p<0.01]. Functional recovery after I/R was significantly lower in HFD-WT mice than NCD-WT mice (percent recovery of LVDP, 15.3 ± 5.4 vs. 44.6 ± 6.3 %, HFD-WT vs. NCD-WT mice, p<0.01). Intriguingly, there was no significant difference in LVDP recovery between HFD-mTOR-Tg and NCD-mTOR-Tg mice (36.5±10.8 vs. 58.8±6.0 %, HFD-mTOR-Tg vs. NCD-mTOR-Tg mice, n.s.). These findings suggest that cardiac mTOR is sufficient to substantially limit the metabolic syndrome-induced cardiac dysfunction following I/R in a mouse model of obesity with glucose intolerance and insulin resistance.