Appointments and affiliations
Cardiologist
University of Ottawa Heart Institute
CEO & Scientific Director
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
Vice President, Research
The Ottawa Hospital
Professor, Department of Medicine
University of Ottawa
Duncan Stewart, MD, is a cardiologist at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute affiliated with the Pulmonary Hypertension Clinic . He also holds leadership appointments at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and The Ottawa Hospital and is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
Background
Dr. Stewart began his career in academic cardiology at McGill University in Montreal. He then moved to Toronto as Head of Cardiology and, later, Director of the Division of Cardiology at St. Michael’s Hospital, and Executive Director of the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine at the University of Toronto. In 2007, he came to Ottawa as the CEO and Scientific Director of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI), Vice-President of Research at The Ottawa Hospital and Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and has received a number of distinctions and prizes, including the Dexter Man Chair of Cardiology and Research Achievement Award of the University of Toronto, and the Research Achievement Award of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society. He is a recognized leader in translational cardiovascular and regenerative research.
Research and clinical interests
Dr. Stewart’s clinical interests include pulmonary hypertension and vascular repair.
Dr. Stewart has made a number of seminal discoveries dealing with the importance of endothelial factors in health and disease, notably the role of the nitric oxide system in angiogenesis and the role of endothelin-1 in pulmonary hypertension. He is also a leader in developing cell and gene based therapies for cardiovascular disease. He led the first Canadian clinical trial to test an angiogenic gene therapy, using VEGF to try to stimulate heart repair in people who had suffered heart attacks.
He is spearheading the world’s first clinical trial of a gene-enhanced cell therapy for pulmonary hypertension, using endothelial progenitor cells engineered to over-express endothelial nitric oxide synthase. He also launched the first enhanced progenitor cell therapy trial for post heart-attack repair, and he is leading a Canadian effort to initiate the world’s first trial of mesenchymal stem cells for the treatment of acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Publications
Dr. Stewart has published more than 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts.