Transforming Cardiac Care

Graham Wright is a man on a mission. His goal is to extend Ontario’s leadership in the fight against cardiovascular disease by developing the next-generation of imaging tools.

According to Dr. Wright, imaging, which involves producing pictures of areas inside the body and includes devices such as x-ray, ultrasound, CT, PET and MRI, is the key to revolutionizing how cardiovascular disease is diagnosed and treated.

The research director of the Schulich Heart Program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto is heading a $43.5 million research project that will bring together more than 100 scientists from the province’s cardiac centres of excellence in Ottawa, London and Toronto and a long list of private sector partners that include leading diagnostic imaging, pharmaceutical and device companies. It’s being funded, in part, by the Ministry of Research and Innovation’s Research Excellence program.

“We’re uniquely positioned here in Ontario to change the way cardiovascular disease is diagnosed and treated,” says Dr. Wright. “We have unparalleled research expertise in cardiovascular imaging, a collaborative research environment and a focus on technology development – all the elements required.”

Progress can’t come a moment too soon.

“Here and in other developed nations, heart disease already imposes an enormous burden on health care systems,” says Dr. Wright.  “The combination of an aging population and an epidemic of obesity means that more and more people will be living with heart disease. We have to come up with more effective ways to manage it before it overwhelms us.”

The ambitious project, which will involve researchers from a wide range of disciplines, is targeting three areas. The first is early stage vascular disease where the focus will be on developing and assessing non-invasive imaging methods to monitor arterial disease and the effectiveness of new drug treatments in stopping or reversing its progression.

The second target is symptomatic disease. Here the focus will be on developing approaches to plan and guide less invasive, device-based surgical interventions, such as valve replacements and repair of congenital heart defects, as well as approaches to monitor the results.

The final target is advanced disease, where the goal will be on developing new tools to progress the emerging field of regenerative medicine, which involves repairing and replacing damaged cells and tissues using stem cells.

“It’s a comprehensive approach that will use advances in cardiovascular imaging technology to transform care from early diagnosis to late stage disease,” says Dr. Wright.

While developing better tools to manage heart disease is the main goal of the project, a secondary objective is to build on the province’s environment of innovation and established expertise to entice both world-class researchers and leading healthcare companies to Ontario.
GE Healthcare is one of the companies involved in the project and obviously keenly interested in the results.

“Our focus is on translational research,” says Peter Robertson, GE’s general manager of diagnostic imaging. “The faster we move advances from bench to bedside the more R&D we can do – and the better the patient care becomes.
                                     
“That’s what Dr. Wright’s research project promises to help us accomplish.”