British Heart Foundation (BHF) Centre of Research Excellence Inaugural Symposium on Challenge and Innovation in Cardiovascular Therapeutics – June 2009

The BHF Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial College London celebrated a successful first year with a one day symposium on Challenge and Innovation in Cardiovascular Therapeutics, held on the 5th June 2009

The BHF Centre of Research Excellence at Imperial College London celebrated a successful first year with a one day symposium on Challenge and Innovation in Cardiovascular Therapeutics, held on the 5^th June at the South Kensington campus, with over 250 delegates from a range of academic institutions and commercial companies. The symposium was divided into four sessions: setting a clinical research strategy, enhancing the drug discovery pipeline, cell and gene therapy and biomedical devices.

Professor Michael Schneider, Director of the BHF Centre, gave a brief overview of the Centre as a ‘triangular marriage’ among cardiovascular medicine, the enabling life sciences, and the physical or computational sciences. Professor Peter Weissberg, BHF Medical Director, informed the audience of the charity’s research funding and priorities in the currently troubled financial climate. Professor Peter Sever, NHLI, discussed the global challenge of cardiovascular disease and Professor Rory Collins, from the University of Oxford, described vexing bureaucratic obstacles to conducting clinical trials. The final speaker in the first session, Professor Martin Wilkins, Division of investigative Science, informed the audience on the use of biomarkers to pinpoint therapeutic opportunities in pulmonary hypertension.

The second session, chaired by Professor Richard Templer, featured Dr Patrick Vallance, Senior Vice President of Drug Discovery at GSK, on enhancing the drug discovery pipeline. Two internal speakers followed; Professor Robin Leatherbarrow, Department of Chemistry, spoke about the use of drugs to target protein-protein complex formation, highlighting successes to date. Professor Mike Sternerg, Division of Molecular Biosciences, discussed in silico approaches for discovering new small molecules to modify the activity of characterised target proteins. The session ended with Professor Tim Aitman, MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, who described genomic approaches being used profitably in cardiovascular research.

Professor Sian Harding chaired the session on cell and gene therapy. Guest speaker Professor Stephanie Dimmeler, from the University of Frankfurt, talked about the work of her group on microRNAs that control angiogenesis, and Professor Nadia Rosenthal, NHLI, discussed genetic and pharmacologic modulation of signaling pathways to explore impediments for effective cardiac regeneration. Dr Vinciane Gaussin, an invited speaker from Cardio3 Biosciences described the development and potential of a growth factor cocktail that drives bone marrow cells to become cardiac muscle. The last speaker in the session, Professor Francesco Dazzi, Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, explained his work on the ability of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) to suppress immune responses.

The final session focused on biomedical devices and was chaired by Professor Ross Ethier. Emeritus Professor Colin Caro, Department of Bioengineering, spoke about helical stents and Dr Emma Birks, NHLI, described the use of left ventricular assist devices (LVADs). Professor Nicholas Peters discussed how collaborative work with Imperial’s Institute of Mathematical Sciences was addressing the challenges in treating complex arrhythmias and Professor Pascal Verdonck from Ghent University described the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in developing medical devices.

The day ended with the keynote lecture, delivered by Professor Sir John Bell, Chair of OSCHR and Regius Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, which addressed the issue of orchestrating a national translational research strategy. Professor Bell spoke abut the work of OSCHR and emphasised the need to maintain a competitive commercial health sciences sector in the current financial climate.

The next BHF Centre symposium, on Cardiac Myogenesis and Regeneration, will take place in October 2009, featuring Professor Eric Olson as keynote lecturer. More information on this symposium will be posted on the BHF Centre website (www.imperial.ac.uk/bhfcre) in the coming weeks.