The University of Ottawa Heart Institute is pleased to announce that George Wells PhD, David Messika-Zeitoun MD, PhD and Marc Ruel MD/Erik Suuronen PhD/Emilio Alarcon PhD have been selected as recipients of the 2024 Dr. Robert Roberts Award for Research Excellence. The Award recognizes UOHI investigators who have published a peer-reviewed, original research paper that has, or is expected to have, a high impact on cardiovascular science and care.
Dr. George Wells is recognized for the international VANISH2 trial reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, which followed 416 patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and ventricular tachycardia for a median of 4.3 years. The team showed that an initial strategy of catheter ablation led to a lower risk of a composite primary end-point event than antiarrhythmic drug therapy. A primary end-point event occurred in 50.7% of patients assigned to catheter ablation, and in 60.6% assigned to drug therapy.
Dr. David Messika-Zeitoun is recognized for a study in the European Heart Journal aiming to identify which patient subsets might benefit from surgery to correct severe tricuspid regurgitation (TR), and when. Using TRIGISTRY, a cohort study of patients with severe isolated functional TR (33 centres, 10 countries), they found higher survival rates with repair than replacement. Furthermore, the benefit of intervention declined as TRI-SCORE increased with no benefit of any type of surgery in the high TRI-SCORE category.
Drs. Marc Ruel, Erik Suuronen and Emilio Alarcon are recognized for describing development of a minimalistic, adhesive soft material in Advanced Functional Materials. The team screened hundreds of potential formulations of self-assembling, custom-designed collagen-like peptide sequences for the in situ formation of tissue-bonding 3D hydrogels. They identified nine promising formulations, whose fine-tunable skin and heart repair capabilities were demonstrated in vitro and in clinically-relevant animal models.
Congratulations to Dr. Wells, Dr. Messika-Zeitoun, and Drs. Ruel, Suuronen and Alarcon on their outstanding work!