[BIC-announce] Talk by Dr. Pierre Jordaan: Challenges in measuring Cardiac Function and dysfunction, Wednesday 4pm - 5pm

[Benoit Gallix, Dr.]

Hi Kaleem,

I will come with Matthias Friedrich , specialized in cardiac MR

See you tomorrow

Benoit
________________________________
From: Kaleem Siddiqi [siddiqi at cim.mcgill.ca]
Sent: November 30, 2015 9:09 AM
To: bic-announce at bic.mni.mcgill.ca
Subject: Talk by Dr. Pierre Jordaan: Challenges in measuring Cardiac Function and dysfunction, Wednesday 4pm - 5pm

Dear Colleagues,

Dr. Pierre Jordaan who is a cardiologist who now serves as a cardiovascular safety expert for Novartis Pharma, Basel, Switzerland, will be giving a talk on cardiac function and dysfunction from a clinical perspective. I’ve attached an abstract below. Please do attend and should you like to meet with Pierre after the talk (e.g. on Thursday or Friday
this week) let me know and I will arrange a suitable time.

Best Regards,
Kaleem

-------------------------------------------

Date/Time/Location:
Wednesday, December 2nd, 4pm to 5pm, McConnell Engineering 437

Speaker:
Dr. Pierre Jordaan
Cardiovascular Safety Expert, Novartis Pharma, Switzerland.

--------------------------------------------
Challenges in measuring Cardiac Function and dysfunction: A clinical perspective
Nature has provided man with robust physiological systems to sustain life and ensure survival under adverse conditions. The cardiovascular system is such a system, with considerable redundancy to ensure a continuous blood circulation to the vital organs. Therefore, despite significant advances in medical research, the early identification of cardiotoxicity, which would allow early intervention, remains challenging.
Echocardiography and magnetic imaging are the two cornerstones of measuring cardiac function directly. Neither is optimal – technical issues including operator dependency causes considerable variability with echo’s (up to 12%), and accessibility, exposure to radiation and cost limit the routine use of MRI.
Cardiotoxicity can be either reversible or transient (Type I), or permanent (Type 2). Often dysfunction starts as functional changes and as the disease progresses, structural damage follows. However, non-specific cytotoxic agents may cause permanent damage to the heart and other organs that may only manifest and be diagnosed late.
Routine assessment for the early identification of cardiotoxicity in clinical research include circulatory biomarkers. Typically this includes the cardiac troponins (or CK/CK-MB)  that measures myocardial  cellular toxicity, and the natriuretic peptides, that reflect cardiac overload. More recently, disease-specific miRNA is being assessed, although it is still not clear if the miRNA elevation is pathology- or compound-specific or compound-agnostic, and whether they are epiphenomena or are actively involved in the pathologic process. What is clear that these circulatory biomarkers may occur transiently, and too early or too late blood sampling may not be diagnostic, despite the presence of structural disease.
Cardiotoxicity is especially relevant in oncology: As patients with cancer survive longer, cardiotoxicity may manifest after a long time. Secondly, targeted cancer therapy may alter the very core of life-sustaining pathways both in cancer cells and in healthy tissue, including the heart. Earlier identification of cardiac dysfunction would potentially guide drug selection, trigger dose reduction, or alert the clinician to the need for preventative treatment, which has been effective in breast cancer, for example.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/pipermail/bic-announce/attachments/20151201/127e25b1/attachment.html>