Monash Uni-Baker IDI-Monash Heart Cardiovascular Alliance meeting

The Monash Uni-Baker IDI-Monash Heart Cardiovascular Alliance meeting was held on Wednesday, 10 June 2015 with broad attendance from Monash Uni, Baker IDI, Alfred Health, Monash Heart and Monash Health. The day highlighted ongoing clinical cardiovascular research as well as identifying unmet clinical need and was aimed at bringing a closer understanding between our physician-scientists and our fundamental/basic scientists and engineers. Speakers gave presentations on hot topics, state of the art for treatment of various diseases, areas of interest, materials and technologies of interest and addressed the big unanswered clinical/research questions and gaps in these areas.

A number of the MIME leadership team and MIME researchers attended the meeting. Prof. John Forsythe spoke on materials for cardiac repair and Prof. Wenlong Cheng spoke about the wearable sensing technologies aimed at cardiac monitoring.

Based on the most significant unmet clinical needs in CVD, a range of research opportunities were identified, and MIME researchers are invited to consider how they may contribute to collaborative projects in these areas. These include:
  1. Designing the ‘perfect device’ for the various valvular structural disorders 
  2. Biomarker for identifying onset of neurotoxicity following cardiac arrest to enable clinical decision making
  3. Biomarkers/identification of vulnerable plaques (as opposed to the already ruptured plaque)
  4. Invitation to follow up on intriguing gene expression findings in the pressure overloaded heart
  5. Innovative approaches for fighting infection/would healing in the very specific problem of line entry/exit in the context of implantation of ventricular assist devices.
  6. Applications for wearable devices which practically become a ‘part’ of the patient’s skin
  7. Applications for access to the ASPREE databases - particularly for prospective studies in the elderly well where the predicted primary endpoints might be particularly insightful:  3787; Deaths:  1422; Dementia:  915; Cancers:  1946; CVD: 1792 (including hospitalisation for cardiac failure); Major haemorrhagic events:   981 
  8. Applications for tissue engineering including light activated disrupted scaffolding bio-organic materials. Discussion on the feasibility of 3-D printed scaffolding.