More than 160 people took time away from a warm, sunny evening to learn more about heart failure and what researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry are doing to further understand and treat the disease.
The topic of the faculty's second Centennial Lectures was: Why do hearts fail? The public lecture series, which features two speakers at a time, is being hosted as a lead-up to the medical school's 100th birthday in 2013 to highlight ongoing translational research by its investigators - from the bench to the bedside. The first set of Centennial Lectures was in January.
"These presentations are aimed at illustrating the importance of translational research and what is currently happening in our faculty," said interim Dean Verna Yiu at the event. "It's key for us and allows our faculty members to collaborate, and to really close the gap between the latest scientific discoveries, which is the pipeline, and apply them in clinical practice."
The two speakers were Justin Ezekowitz, a cardiologist in the Department of Medicine, and Howard Young, a researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and researcher with the National Institute of Nanotechnology. Ezekowitz focused on his current projects, including:
· Proper diagnosis of heart disease.
· Sodium reduction in patients with heart failure and whether it actually helps them.
· Looking for early biomarkers in blood samples from patients at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute.
Young focused on his research of a protein, called phospholamban, which is vital in helping the muscles of the heart react to changes in the body, such as stress or exercise. Young recently found a previously unknown mutation in this protein. Serendipitously, his discovery was validated when the mutation was found in separate research on patients in Brazil, a month after he had submitted his paper to a scientific journal.
The two researchers met for the first time when they were asked to speak together.
"Instead of me just sitting back and predicting mutants, there's been an interesting consequence of my invitation to give a Centennial Lecture," said Young. "I realized that he [Ezekowitz] had this large group of about 800 patients for which he had blood samples, and that based on the data in the literature, there should be about one to three mutations in the phospholamban gene represented in this cohort.
"So we wanted to go about trying to discover new mutations and see how prevalent some of the ones that are already known are in this group," he said.
"We've just started sequencing patients in our lab, so it's an exciting new collaboration."
In other words, bringing these two together to speak has fostered an entirely new path of discovery in patients in Alberta. The pair-up could eventually lead to early screening of certain types of heart disease caused by mutations in the genes.
This is what the lectures are also meant to do, help build connections to advance vital translational research that will save lives down the road.
The next Centennial Lectures will be on Sept. 24. The speakers have yet to be announced.