Heart to heart with Head of Cardiovascular Science as he wins top award

Professor Michael Schneider wins Distinguished Achievement Award from Council of Basic Cardiovascular Sciences - News

By Laura Gallagher
Tuesday 6 November 2007

An Imperial College researcher who investigates ways to repair heart muscle damaged by heart disease and heart attacks is honoured today in Orlando.

Professor Michael Schneider, Chair in Cardiology and Head of Cardiovascular Science at the National Heart and Lung Institute, has won this year’s Distinguished Achievement Award from the Council of Basic Cardiovascular Sciences. Professor Schneider collects his award today in Orlando, at a ceremony which forms part of the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007.

Professor Schneider said of winning his award: "What's particularly nice about this award is that it is given by my peer group, with whom I grew up scientifically. The American Heart Association is the largest scientific organisation for cardiovascular research so this is particularly meaningful coming from them."

Professor Schneider's work looks at how to harness the body's own mechanisms to stop heart muscle cells from dying and help the heart to repair itself.

When a person has a heart attack, as much as 50 per cent of heart muscle can be suddenly wiped out, as the lack of blood flow to the heart starves it of oxygen. The heart can also suffer cumulative damage during heart disease when muscle cells die sporadically over a long period of time.

Professor Schneider and his team are researching two key areas. The first is identifying which proteins either convey death signals to the heart muscle cells or execute these death signals. The researchers are hoping they will one day be able to develop drugs which target these death signals, or switch on protective proteins in the heart. This would restore the heart's ability to continue pumping vigorously in the event of a heart attack.

The second key area on which Professor Schneider's team is focusing is regenerating heart muscle cells, either by using embryonic stem cells or by using very rare progenitor cells his group discovered in the adult heart. In animal models, these progenitor cells are able to regenerate heart muscle cells and weave themselves almost seamlessly into the architecture of heart tissue. They are better able to turn into new heart muscle than cells from the bone marrow or other adult sources.

Professor Schneider explained: "Regenerative medicine is one of the most explosively exciting areas of heart research of the past decade, which has made its way from laboratory esoterica to large-scale clinical trials in humans. Imperial and its affiliates are well-positioned to become a world leader in this field.

"Within ten years it might become the standard of care to treat patients with heart-forming cells when they undergo a heart attack or suffer from chronic heart failure. We also seek ways to activate the latent cells within a patient's heart and boost the heart's ability to replace the muscle cells that have died," he added.

Professor Schneider joined the College in September this year from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He said of his move to Imperial: "This is the best job on the planet, because of the combination of clinical strengths with different kinds of clinical expertise; the different kinds of patients the hospitals see; and the depth and breadth of the sciences.

"Imperial is a breathtaking and extraordinary place in terms of the colleagues I have here and the opportunities for building new programmes. I also adore London, although I’m working much too hard to take full advantage of it – at every moment there are extraordinary things to do," he added.

Professor Schneider was educated at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke University, followed by six years’ research training at the National Institutes of Health, USA. Nobel Laureate Marshall Nirenberg was his first mentor.

In 1984, Professor Schneider was recruited to the nascent program in cardiac molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he became Professor of Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics as well as Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Development and the inaugural recipient of the M. D. Anderson Foundation Chair.

Professor Schneider served for a decade as Associate Editor of the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation. He is an elected Fellow of the AHA and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is a Founding Fellow of the International Society for Heart Research.

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