The Rogers Foundation announces a second landmark gift, building on its $130 million gift in 2014, to sustain the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research in perpetuity and bring the promise of precision cardiac health to patients across Canada and globally. In 2014, the...
Five years ago today, the largest
private gift in Canadian health-care history came to life. The Ted Rogers
Centre for Heart Research was spurred by the vision of Ted Rogers Sr., who
believed it would take a unique blend of expertise, tools and persistence to
solve the disease that took his life in 2008.
Heart failure is one of the world’s greatest
health challenges. In Canada, it affects at least one million Canadians – a
figure that will grow by 25% in the next 20 years. And each year, Canadian
hospitals spend over $3 billion managing the intricate needs of those it
affects.
The Rogers family asked: what if an array of
multidisciplinary cardiovascular experts worked together, rather than
separately? They decided to make a serious impact on these numbers with one of
their own: an unprecedented $130 million donation to unite three world-class
institutions – SickKids, University Health Network and University of Toronto –
in a common pursuit to improve the future of heart health for adults and
children.
Clinicians and scientists from the three partners have now
spent five years peeling back the layers of a complex disease. Targeting
specific inroads into solving heart failure, they’ve worked to help give
patients a better quality of life today, while exploring advanced treatment and
prevention strategies. They’ve built a foundation on three overlapping areas of
focus:
Dramatically improve patient outcomes through data science,
predictive analytics and new clinical strategies
Analyze
the human genome to find the genetic roots of heart
failure
Develop new ways to repair and regenerate injured heart
tissue
After five years, there is much to celebrate.
Keeping patients safe
at home
Now, at Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (UHN), one nurse manages
nearly 400 patients with heart failure – who are at home. A Canadian-first, the
Medly remote patient monitoring system
empowers patients to manage their health while clinicians can quickly assess
their condition from afar, eliminating the need to visit the ER.
On the Medly app, patients record their daily weight, blood
pressure, heart rate and any changing symptoms. In real-time, an algorithm
analyzes the data and, should a patient’s status be deteriorating, Medly sends
alerts to the care team and an actionable message to the patient.
Emerging research shows that Medly improves a patient’s
quality of life and ability to practise self-care, while reducing hospital
admissions related to heart failure. The system keeps people safe by catching
them before they are in trouble – including patients in remote areas across
Ontario, who can’t easily access specialist care.
Medly is now being explored in many large Ontario hospitals,
and international partnerships are underway. The goal of reducing heart failure
re-hospitalizations by 50% in the next decade is well within sight.
Searching the genome
Building on a legacy of expertise in genetics, teams at
SickKids have been empowered by the Rogers family gift to perform intensive
whole genome sequencing (WGS) in children and families with cardiovascular
diseases.
By analyzing and interpreting a patient’s vast genome, Ted Rogers Centre
investigators are finding clues about the genetic roots of heart failure and
returning important results to families that influence their care moving
forward. The Centre is leading the way in WGS of families with early onset
cardiomyopathy, identifying defects residing in hidden regions of the genome. Genetic
knowledge empowers families to make decisions about future screening of family
members for heart disease so that they can receive timely medical care. Through
an international study called PRIMaCY
led by the Ted Rogers Centre, such precision knowledge is also being used to
predict and reduce the risk of sudden death – a devastating consequence in
adolescents and teenagers living with this disease.
Last year, the Centre was at the heart of a remarkable
discovery for tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) – a congenital heart condition
where four related heart defects typically occur together. How TOF develops has
largely been unclear. Akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, our team
sequenced genomic data on a large number of individuals looking for underlying
genetic contributions for TOF. They discovered a new link between a genetic
pathway and TOF, which is potentially responsible for 10% of all cases.
Such a finding means TOF is more hereditary in nature than
was previously believed – pointing to new avenues for prevention and possible
treatments.
This is the road to personalized medicine, where medications
and care strategies are informed by each patient, rather than thousands of
different people with the same disease. The multidisciplinary team at SickKids
is examining how to integrate WGS into a clinical cardiac setting in a way that
is both effective and safe for patients and families.
An incubator for new
innovations
Meanwhile, the Ted Rogers Centre’s research zone at the
University of Toronto has become a model of collaborative work. At the
Translational Biology and Engineering Program, nine principal investigators and
their teams collectively target heart failure.
Here, bioengineers and medical researchers join in using
biomaterials and stem cells to rebuild an injured heart before it begins to
fail. Sophisticated MRI methods are tested in a bid to diagnose heart failure
as early as possible in patients. The study of proteomics is fused with
artificial intelligence to find new biomarkers that can predict heart failure.
It is also here where a unique new program called ECHO
trains new entrepreneurs who have invented cardiovascular technologies. This
12-month program is an incubator that gives innovators the knowledge to move
ideas from bench to bedside. In October 2019, a pitch competition culminated in
a $250,000 award to a team who invented a new method to clear
dangerous protein deposits that cause a type of heart failure for which there
are no existing therapies.
A rush of discovery to come
In the next five years, this ecosystem that the Ted Rogers
Centre has built and funded in Toronto will produce a rush of discovery and
advances in patient care.
Canada’s largest cardiotoxicity clinic will serve thousands of cancer survivors each year, helping protect their hearts from the side effects of chemotherapy. Meanwhile, its world-leading cardio-oncology researchers will continue to publish original studies on how hearts suffer toxic damage from systemic therapies meant for other diseases – and how to prevent it.
More incredible findings will emerge from funded
investigators in that ecosystem. In 2018, one SickKids lab uncovered an antibody that can identify 98% of
all cases of the leading cause of sudden cardiac death. The best part: we can
detect the antibody easily in a simple blood test.
The Centre will continue to be at the forefront of discovery in the interplay of
type 2 diabetes and heart failure – and how medications meant for the former
can actually treat the latter.
In hospitals, an algorithm will enable emergency physicians to
confidently discharge patients home whose lives are not at risk. A vast digital
platform linking clinical and research activities at Peter Munk Cardiac Centre
will merge predictive analytics and real world evidence to give doctors the
ability to spot warning signs for heart failure in ways no human could.
The potential inside the Rogers family’s transformative gift is coming alive with each passing month. Here’s to the first five years, the five after that – and a future where heart failure is no longer a threat to the lives of so many.