Members of the media are invited to a special keynote address by Dr. Eduardo Marbán, one of the world’s most eminent cardiologists, and a seasoned researcher, who will be speaking on the Therapeutic Regeneration of the “Irreversibly” Injured Heart, as part of the Heart Institute’s Research Day.
WHAT: “Therapeutic Regeneration of the “Irreversibly” Injured Heart.” from Dr. Eduardo Marbán
WHEN: Monday, May 30, 2016 at 1 p.m.
WHERE: Ottawa Heart Institute, Foustanellas Auditorium, 40 Ruskin Street, Ottawa
** Members of the media interested in interviewing Dr. Marbán
must confirm their interest in advance. **
Dr. Eduardo Marbán, is an international leader in cardiology and a pioneering heart researcher. His 30-plus years of experience in patient care and research have led to key discoveries in gene and stem cell therapies for heart disease.
As the founding director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, a multidisciplinary entity which brings together adult and pediatric cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, imaging specialists and researchers to foster discovery and enhance patient care, Dr. Marbán has contributed to Cedars-Sinai’s long tradition of excellence and innovation, a tradition that includes inventing the Swan-Ganz catheter. establishing the nation’s first comprehensive women’s heart center and performing more catheter-based, non-surgical heart valve procedures than any other medical center
In 2009, Marbán led the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute team that completed the world’s first procedure in which a patient’s own heart tissue was used to grow specialized cardiac stem cells. Those cells were then injected back into the patient’s heart in an effort to regenerate healthy muscle in a heart injured by a heart attack. Results, published in The Lancet in 2012, showed that one year after receiving the investigational stem cell treatment, heart attack patients demonstrated a significant reduction in the size of the scar left on the heart muscle after a heart attack.
Since that first infusion, physicians in the Heart Institute have commenced multiple stem cell trials for a variety of heart patients. They also inaugurated a regenerative medicine clinic to evaluate heart and vascular disease patients for participation in stem cell medical studies throughout the U.S.
The Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute now ranks as the top heart program in the western USA, and performs more heart transplants annually than any other institution worldwide.
A cellular electrophysiologist by training, Dr. Marbán pursued questions of relevance to heart disease, including ischemia, heart failure and arrhythmias. The Marbán laboratory elucidated the fundamental pathogenesis of myocardial stunning, pioneered the concept of gene therapy to alter electrical excitability, and created the first de novo biological pacemaker as an alternative to electronic pacemakers.