Watch the interview here: youtu.be/UBj1xrZVDHM
Highlight: In this Onlife interview, Dr Harrison, awardee of the Basic Research Prize by the American Heart Association, speaks about the results of recent inflammation-based trials, and why basic science often fails to translate into clinical practice.
Biography: Dr Harrison is the Betty and Jack Bailey Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and the Director of Clinical Pharmacology.
Notable recognitions include the Robert M. Berne Award from the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiological Society, the Novartis Award from the American Heart Association Council on High Blood Pressure and the Carl Wiggers Award for Cardiovascular Physiology from the American Physiological Society. He was named a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association, received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Society of Hypertension and was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focusses on basic science related to vascular function and hypertension. He is also a Deputy Editor of Cardiovascular Research.
Summary of interview
Dr Harrison was recently awarded the Basic Research Prize by the American Heart Association, recognizing and honouring the work that he has completed over the last 25 years. An award that Dr Harrison insists also belongs to the men and women who have participated in his research and worked with him during this time.
A large amount of basic science fails to translate beyond the laboratory into clinical practice. Dr Harrison, a practising clinician, explained that translational manifestations of basic science research can take a long time to materialize as they often involve many pitfalls during the process of translation. For example, the use of checkpoint inhibitors in cancer were discovered 25 years ago but are only now, in recent years, being used very successfully to treat the disease.
The results of the Cardiovascular Inflammation Reduction Trial (CIRT) were presented to the American Heart Association (in November 2018) and investigated the benefit of treating individuals with coronary artery disease and metabolic syndrome or diabetes mellitus with low-dose methotrexate. However, the CIRT trial showed that patients did not experience any benefits over placebo while treated with methotrexate. This is also a negative result for the field of hypertension where inflammation is highly involved in both the pathogenesis and potential complications. Dr Harrison, whose research concerns hypertension, shared that this illustrates how little we currently understand about inflammation and how we are now learning that it involves many different pathways. Read our report on highlights from the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2018:https://academic.oup.com/cardiovascres/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cvr/cvz005/5307935
One size apparently does not fit all. Dr Harrison compared the use of IL-6 antagonists which work well for rheumatoid arthritis but not work for ankylosing spondylitis—although both are inflammatory diseases. They have different mechanisms and pathways, hence why such treatments can fall short of working in the same way for both. This notion can be extended to explain why immune modulators like methotrexate failed in the recent CIRT trial, while an IL-1β antagonist was successful in the Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcome Study (CANTOS) study.
Cardiovascular Research has Deputy Editors with specialties spanning the breadth of cardiovascular medicine. These Deputy Editors are closely involved in shaping the future of the journal. Speaking as a Deputy Editor of Cardiovascular Research, Dr Harrison remarked that he has been impressed with the quality of papers that the journal receives, and papers which have been published have made excellent contributions to the field as a whole. In terms of the present trajectory of the journal, Dr Harrison believes the scope will continue to extend to encompass other aspects of cardiovascular biology which are important and contribute to making the journal an excellent place for authors’ work to be showcased.