Discovery and curiosity bring heart science, patient care together

“Engagement and curiosity are what make this meeting matter,” said Robert Gourdie, director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC’s Center for Vascular and Heart Research.

Gourdie, the Heywood Fralin Professor who studies how cell signaling regulates electrical activity and the spread of injury in the heart, helped lead the fifth annual Vascular and Heart Research Symposium at the institute in Roanoke in August.

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute scientists Scott Johnstone, Junco Warren, and Yassine Sassi organized the program, which brought scientists, engineers and clinicians together to discuss cardiac conduction, metabolism, vascular biology, pulmonary hypertension, heart repair and other areas that intersect in cardiovascular disease.

Michael Friedlander, executive director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute and Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology, described cardiovascular research as an ideal meeting ground for disciplines that too often operate separately.

“Cardiovascular research is the perfect ground for the confluence of many disciplines, whether you’re working in pharmacology, physiology, computational approaches using artificial intelligence, biophysical modeling, or clinical care and the delivery of therapeutics and devices,” Friedlander said. “It is a rich field that allows us to bring all these areas together to make advances.”

Friedlander said progress depends on basic scientists and clinicians learning from one another, connecting frontline needs with advances in molecular biology and genetics.

“It is from that coming together that incredible stuff happens,” Friedlander said.

Habib Samady, senior vice president and director of the Carilion Clinic Cardiovascular Institute, showed how that interdisciplinary approach can begin with a single patient.

Samady used the example of a patient arriving at the hospital with an acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack, to show how research areas represented at the symposium can converge in one clinical case.

A heart attack is not a single scientific problem.

It can involve interrupted blood flow, tissue injury, oxidative stress, abnormal heart rhythms and, later, changes in the heart’s structure. Each stage raises questions for a different branch of cardiovascular science — yet every one of them may be present in the same patient.

He described a continuous exchange in which signals observed in patients generate clinical questions, scientists investigate those questions in the laboratory, and the resulting discoveries return to the clinic to improve care.

“I really can’t wait to leverage that patient population to answer the questions that we have at the basic science lab and vice versa,” Samady said.

The scientific program reflected the breadth of the collaboration. Symposium organizers Johnstone, Sassi, and Warren also presented research on vascular instability, pulmonary arterial hypertension and gene therapy for heart failure, respectively.

Visiting keynote speakers included Stefano Toldo of the University of Virginia, who discussed signaling in acute myocardial infarction; Luisa Iruela-Arispe of Northwestern University, who examined interactions between immune and endothelial cells; and Helen Collins of the University of Louisville, who addressed metabolic drivers of cardiac remodeling in women.

Carilion Clinic also contributed clinical perspectives. Sameh Aziz, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Carilion and professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, discussed pulmonary arterial hypertension. Kristine Ravina, a Carilion neurosurgery resident, discussed cerebral vasospasm, which is a narrowing of brain arteries that can restrict blood flow.

“There’s phenomenal work you all are doing here that needs either tissue or data or diverse patient populations,” Samady said. “It is an exciting collaboration.”