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Circulation on the Run


Dec 24, 2018

Dr Amit Khera:                  Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly summary and backstage pass to the journal. I'm Dr Amit Khera, associate editor and digital strategies editor from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. And I have the privilege of standing in for Dr Carolyn Lam, your usual weekly podcast host. Today we have a special treat. It is our semiannual fellows and training FIT podcast. And the additional part of this treat is we have three very special FITs today. These are our assistant editors for social media for Circulation. And really I want to introduce you just a moment, but I want to thank these three for their hard work and efforts. It really is them that helped bring our social media to life. And importantly for us, we really have a commitment to enhancing fellow education involving fellows in our editorial process and really making sure that the journal is appealing to fellows in training. So we really rely on these three to help us understand what best resonates and what is most helpful for fellows in training. So without further ado, Jainy Savla from UT Southwestern. Welcome Jainy.

Jainy Savla:                         Thanks for having me on the podcast today.

Dr Amit Khera:                  And we have Daniel Ambinder from Johns Hopkins University. Hi Dan.

Daniel Ambinder:             Hey Amit. Thanks for having me on the podcast today.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Absolutely. And finally we have Jeff Hsu from UCLA. Hi Jeff.

Jeff Hsu:                               Hi Amit and hi everyone. Very glad to be here.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Well, Jainy, I'm going to start with you. You've been with us on the social media side the longest. I think it's maybe almost a year or a bit more that you've been working on these efforts. And again, very much appreciate all of your hard work and insight. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Jainy Savla:                         So I'm currently a research fellow at UT Southwestern. So I completed my general cardiology training and I've been doing some extra research training in one of our basic science labs there.

Dr Amit Khera:                  So not surprisingly with your background, do you select an article? So we've asked them each to select one article as they've been working through the social media side and see all of our articles come through. Each to select one that they found was interesting and perhaps summarize for us what it included and what appealed to them. So Jainy, tell us a little bit about the article you chose and why you chose it.

Jainy Savla:                         So, I chose one of the articles that was published in April of 2018 from the Molkentin team lab. And this is a basic science article that focused on which types of cells contribute to heart regeneration. They hadn't thought that there was cardiac progenitor cell that could contribute to the development of new cardiomyocytes. And more recent data has shown that maybe that's not quite the case. So what this study did was used a lot of fancy lineage tracing models to try to figure out which types of cells we're actually contributing to the development of new cardiomyocytes. So importantly, what came from this was that one of their models, they were able to delete two transcription factors that are necessary for cardiomyocytes to develop from these progenitor cells. But they found that when they did that, they even got a higher number of cardiomyocytes that formed. And then what they were able to show in this paper was that actually comes from fusion of leukocytes to cardiomyocytes. And then interestingly, they found a role for one of these transcription factors and the development of endothelial cells. So that was kind of a new, not known function of one of these genes that was previously thought to be just contributory to cardiac development.

Dr Amit Khera:                  It's really a fascinating article when you think about it. Most of the science we publish are people bringing to light new discoveries and certainly there was a component of that here. But in many ways, it was kind of a different article where there had been this a prevailing thought about these c kit positive cells and here they're actually had gone through, refuted what people had thought was happening with these in this de novo cardiomyocyte formation. So you'll see that very often where people's articles or work is headed out to sort of maybe refute or set right what's happening in the literature in the field. Can you comment on that as to that type of article and how that appealed to you in this study?

Jainy Savla:                         That is interesting because previously it has meant that these cells can be used as a therapeutic option in human patients. But some of them were recent data showed that perhaps the new cardiomyocytes weren't actually coming from these cells, but it was hard to say. So the nice part about this paper was really they used a lot of important lineage tracing models to really show where these cells are coming from. And it helped clarify some of the, I guess, more confusing science that had been in the field since there were a few papers that showed these cells were contributary and then a few papers that have shown that maybe they weren't. So I think that's really helpful, particularly when you're talking about things that could be potentially used as therapeutic agents in human. And also the interesting thing is that while these cells themselves may not be useful to perhaps harvest and give to someone, you could potentially alter these cells and then they produce cells that fuse with cardiomyocytes. Or could you use this a different way? So I thought that was also interesting about this article.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Great points in it. It does remind us again that in our enthusiasm for rushing things to clinical practices in some things in this field, the importance of rigorous basic science to really understand the molecular underpinnings. And as you mentioned, there's some new insights here that could be used for clinical therapeutic purposes in the future. So definitely an interesting article and glad you enjoyed it and brought it to our attention. I'm going to ask you a bit of a different question. You again have been working with this in the social media side for longer. You've seen this now for some time about the different articles that come through. I know you and I've had several conversations about our different platforms, Twitter or Facebook, and how they're different and how we engage with them and how we engage with the audience. Can you tell us a little bit just reflecting now on your time and working with social media from a journal perspective, kind of what you've learned? What are some interesting observations over this year?

Jainy Savla:                         Definitely one interesting observation is just that their general usage of these social media platforms has increased significantly since I've started doing this. And you can see this with when we get articles that are accepted, how many authors have Twitter handles that they'd like to be tagged in some of these posts. And that's just gone up significantly since I've started doing this. And that also changes sort of what the comments we get on some of the posts and the back and forth discussions that we're seeing on these platforms. And then the second thing I found really interesting over time is that the way people use Facebook is really different from the way people use Twitter. And you can follow the discussions that people have linked to our posts a little bit better on Facebook. And then on Twitter, there's also a lot of similar discussions about these posts. But they kind of manifest in different ways and it's really interesting to see how that plays out.

Dr Amit Khera:                  I think those are fantastic points. And from a fellow's perspective, how do you think fellows are engaging with social media now compared to maybe, I don't know, when you started your training a few years back. What have you seen in a positive light?

Jainy Savla:                         I mean in general, there are more fellows on Twitter now than when I was a first-year fellow. Even myself, I've got my Twitter account when I was in fellowship. I didn't have one prior to that. I mean it's interesting because people are able to showcase their work a little bit better I think with these types of handles whereas before maybe you wouldn't know that even one of your own co fellows had published something. So it's kind of nice to see people use that kind of as a networking tool in some ways or to showcase some of their own work, which is something that when I was a first year and I didn't have a Twitter handle and there weren't as many fellows on Twitter, I didn't really notice some of the work that's being done by some of my colleagues at my level.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Those are great points and I'll stoplight some of the things you just said talking about it being a way for fellows to really showcase their work, to help with networking and in some ways, it's sort of the great equalizer. So I think it's really a valuable platform specifically for fellows. Well thank you Jainy. I'm going to move on to Daniel and hear a little bit from Daniel. Tell us a bit about yourself.

Daniel Ambinder:             I'm currently a second year cardiology fellow at John's Hopkins Hospital and I plan on doing interventional and structural cardiology in the future.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Great and certainly a lively and growing field and so many exciting things happening. Well, it's interesting you chose an article today that is more of a clinical article and obviously quite different than the last one we heard, but equally as interesting. Tell us a little about the article you've chose and why you chose it.

Daniel Ambinder:             I was very excited about this article that was published in Circulation back in July 2018. So, it's by Dr Borlaug and Reddy on how to diagnose HFpEF and what they did was they took patients with clinical dyspnea and they used invasive human dynamics to kind of assess whether or not they had HFpEF. And by doing so they were able to generate a list of clinical and eco based guidance to help us kind of identify patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. So they came up with this amazing little table which was featured in Circulation and on Circulation twitter, where they have a chart that basically goes through several clinical variables including weight and hypertensiveness, atrial fibrillation, pulmonary hypertension, being elderly. And filling pressure is based on echo cardiographic information. And by that they were able to generate a score and give you a probability of if your patient has HFpEF or not.

                                                And the reason why I really enjoyed reading this article and also posting this article was because going through internal medicine and not being so fundamentally aware of echo and kind of what goes into understanding left ventricular filling pressures, it was challenging to make a diagnosis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Do you just basically say, "My patient has lower extremity swelling but normal EF? They have heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and [inaudible 00:09:32] on the [inaudible 00:09:33]. And so I thought that this would be really helpful to the medical community at large. And in fact, shortly after we posted it, I saw that our cardiology console fellow is actually utilizing this exact table to help one of the medicine teams manage a patient with lower extremity swelling and come to the diagnosis of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. So that is why I chose this article for today.

Dr Amit Khera:                  That's a great article and I thought you summarized it very well. And it is a field. HFpEF you'd see a lot of articles in Circulation on this topic. We have many people that are interested from an editor’s level but also from a society level. This is a huge problem, but we know very, very little. And I'm sure you know that as well and this was a wonderful tool. Just shows you're sort of the beauty and simplicity. Although if you read it, the message were pretty rigorous and they had a lot of great work that they did to develop it. But I love that the H2 HFpEF, how they basically came up with it h for heavy and the f from fibrillation. So I thought that was incredibly creative and a very simplistic but useful score. So, you said your, tell us about yourself. Have you used the H2 of the HFpEF score yet?

Daniel Ambinder:             Absolutely. I use it in clinic on a daily basis. And I actually pull up the Tweet in my office and show the patients why I think that they have heart failure preserved ejection fraction, especially since many of my patients start to get really nervous when you start talking about heart failure. But then they don't understand that they have a normal functioning heart. They can't really put those two together. And so going through this chart and going through the etiology, or at least what we know about heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, turns out to be quite helpful.

Dr Amit Khera:                  And the basis of this study goes back to hemodynamics. This obviously is a cohort where they had done invasive hemodynamics to essentially diagnosed HFpEF based on pressure. So as you, as someone who's going interventional and structural where we are really seeing kind of the rebirth or refocus on hemodynamics again, tell me a little bit like what you're learning in terms of hemodynamics and how you think that importance in today's practice of cardiovascular medicine.

Daniel Ambinder:             One of my passions is spending as much time as I possibly can in the cardiac ICU. And we're fortunate to meet many different patients that come in with very different kinds of cardiogenic shock for other hemodynamic compromise from other types of shock. And I have found it extremely helpful to think about either using a virtual Swan or by actually getting the measurements with a PA catheter to kind of identify where the break in the system is to hopefully provide our patients with the ability to turn them around in a fast manner before they develop metabolic compromise from prolonged hypoperfusion.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Great summary of how you're using hemodynamics and the training. And I'm going to pivot. The last question for you is when we first met I think several months back and we're communicating about your interest in social media, one thing that was really interesting and fascinating was the great work you're doing on Twitter on your own account where you essentially, if I think you told me this right, you sit on your iPhone and basically in this matter of a very few minutes would construct cases and teaching points on Twitter. So tell me a little bit about that, about using Twitter for medical education and learning cardiology and cases. And I know you're passionate about that. So tell us a little bit more about that.

Daniel Ambinder:             Back in May, last year, I had been in my first year of cardiology fellowship. And I was really kind of obsessed with grabbing as much imaging and cases as I could to construct them into teaching stories to share these important stories that I encounter with other people. And so also share the aha moments that I have when I'm learning from my mentors about a new clinical condition or even a clinical condition that I've encountered many times. We never thought about any unique way. And so I was putting these all together and developing somewhat of a library of cases. But I would share them with the residents that I was working with at the time. And then Dr Erin Michos was one of my mentors at Hopkins. She's an echocardiographer and she kind of exposed me to the Twitter community where you're really able to just start reaching out to different people and share the same insights that I had saved on my drive on my computer. And so I started constructing these cases, putting that together and developing them and then associating them with like a few bullet pointed tidbits of pearls that I can put on Twitter. And I quickly realized what an amazing community Twitter have to offer in terms of cardiology and in terms of the medical education community at large.

                                                At first, I realized you can't put out content and not expect to participate in a conversation. It has to be two ways. You have to really engage with others and others will engage with you. And then just a couple months later, it's really grown that you can post a case, post the teaching pearl and in about 24 hours it can be viewed thousands and thousands of times, really internationally. And generates just so much great conversation. So it's been really a tremendous way to communicate with the world, especially within the cardiovascular world.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Well thanks. I think there's so much learning that can happen and I think the work you're doing with cases and with others. And I know when I've gone on Twitter, even in just two minutes you can see really fascinating things and learn a lot. So keep up the good work and appreciate your efforts there. I'm going to switch gears and finally finished with Jeff Hsu from UCLA. Jeff, tell us a bit about yourself.

Jeff Hsu:                               I'm a fellow at UCLA. So I actually finished my general cardiology fellowship pretty recently and now I'm a research fellow in the STAR program here. I'm also enrolled in the PhD program at UCLA in the Department of Physiology and planning to defend in the next few months. So right now, very stressed out about that. Starting in July, I'll be starting advanced fellowship in advanced heart failure and transplant here at UCLA.

                                                Well excellent and best of luck to you in your PhD defense. Now you also chose a very interesting article that again, all of yours are a bit different. So tell us a little about the article you chose and why you chose it.

                                                When I chose this article, I was really excited by a few weeks ago. It was published in the December 4th issue of Circulation called Determining the Pathogenicity of a Genomic Variant of Uncertain Significance Using CRISPR/Cas9 and Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. So this came out of the lab of Joe Wu at Stanford and the co first authors is Ning Ma, Joe Zhang and Ilanit Itzhaki. But I think the beauty of this article is that it really addressed this frustrating clinical scenario in question that we often encounter nowadays in this era of genome sequencing. And now that we're sequencing a lot more people, since the cost of sequencing has come down a lot, we were finding a lot of these mutations that we don't know what to do with, so I think Dr Wu's lab really try to address this question using the disease model with the cardiomyopathy. So, leveraging Dr Wu's expertise in using human induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs, they found a patient who is actually healthy but apparently had this mutation in this gene called MYL3 or myosin light chain 3. And so this patient had a variance of uncertain significance in this gene.

                                                Now, notably, this patient, again had no clinical phenotype, was very healthy and the patient's family members over three generations were all healthy too. But had this mutation that based on in silico analyses was thought to be likely pathogenic. So using cells from this patient that they reprogrammed into cardiomyocyte, they tested various properties of these cells from the same patient to see whether or not they thought this mutation is actually a pathogenic mutation. So again, using these reprogrammed cardiomyocytes, they tested a variety of things including gene expression, sarcomere structure, and cell contractility, action potentials, and the handling of calcium. And they saw that even with this mutation, there were no abnormal findings in vitro in their system.

                                                Now just to prove that their cell culture system and this in vitro model of testing the pathogenicity of certain mutations actually works, they actually took cells from a patient who did have the clinical phenotype as a result of a known mutation that causes hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. And found that when testing those cells in vitro, they did demonstrate abnormal phenotypes in all the parameters I mentioned before. So I thought this is really exciting. I thought this is a great way to address, potentially answer whether or not we think these variants of uncertain significance that we often encounter are indeed pathogenic because we are often just left in this situation where we don't know what to do with this information. But this potentially at least is a proof of concept for this protocol where we can finally take advantage of the ability to take cells from our patient and actually test them in the lab to see whether or not either various treatments work or whether or not these mutations that actually will results in pathology down the line. So I thought overall this was a great paper that was a great summary of how we can take the bedside to the bench actually. And I'm just really looking forward to the future where we can maybe then bring it back to the bedside.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Well thanks. I think that's an excellent choice and a great summary. And this article really hit all of the kind of timely and cutting-edge topics in the era genomic medicine and precision medicine have really kind of individualized treatments. And when we get stuck, these VUSes, these are a nightmare. And also this is sort of proof of concept for extending this to other treatments and other ways to test drugs and therapies. I've heard Joe, we talk about this before and use the word disease in the dishes. He did I think in the article itself and it's exactly that. I mean the potential here is profound. I'll pivot this into the next question for you. For our roles, one thing we do is we interact a lot with media and I interact a lot with them to help translate, I guess, the articles that we have to things that would be able to be digestible for media and for lay individuals. It was interesting because it's hard for us to do that with basic science and most of the time we have some difficulty in translating that. But this one translated pretty well and I think we had done some various press releases and things because it really showed the potential of modern medicine and kind of the excitement of it.

                                                But that gets to the question I have for you, something we have discussed as well, your interest in basic science and some of the challenges of taking basic science articles and digesting them down to a couple hundred-word tweet. Even as beautiful as all the pictures are, and in this article I think there's six figures, but each panel is 10 pictures or 10 figures by themselves. And how do we digest basic science articles down to make them really appeal to people on social media and help people understand that may not be in the fields or in basic science that are clinicians, if you will. I know you've thought about that a little bit. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that.

Jeff Hsu:                               Jainy, Dan and I have this challenge on a weekly basis, figuring out how to summarize great articles such as this one into a short tweet. And I think that is a big challenge particularly for basic science articles on social media to make it appeal to a broader audience because the audience you're seeing on Twitter and Facebook, again, they're not just basic scientists. If you want to catch people's attention, you need to find a way to really understand the big picture of the question you're answering in your basic science research. So I think that is a challenge. You're challenged to make your science appealing to a broader audience. But I think again, that's one of the advantages of social media is that you can appeal to a larger audience and have a wide range of people engage with your research and understand your research. So it is something that we work on is to try to pick out the figure that best represents the science that was done in these basic science articles.

                                                It can be quite challenging because a lot of times one picture won't do it justice. So it's tough to distill a full article in one picture. It is helpful when some articles do have a summary, a graphic or figure where they typically reserve their last figure for either a cartoon or some type of schematic that really explains either the mechanism or pathway that they explored in their article. So what we've found is that these articles that do have some of these illustrations or summary figures, they seem to engage a larger audience on Twitter and social media. So personally I find it more appealing when I do see these summary figures. So if there is one recommendation, I would have the basic science researchers, especially trainees is in this age of social media, try to come up with an illustration or summary figure for your research. I think it helps you figure out what is truly important with the research that you've done and helps you communicate this research to a broader audience. And I've seen a lot of people take advantage of a graphic designers to really help them illustrate their research. And I found that to be very effective in articles I've read on social media.

Dr Amit Khera:                  Thanks Jeff. That's a great point and great suggestion. And certainly these days the most effective communicators are those they can translate their complex science into easily digestible bites and can think of ways to portray them in ways that sort of summarize, like you said, be it summary figures or otherwise. And it's a challenge and also talent. And you all are certainly perfecting that. Well, I think we've had an excellent conversation. I have to tell you, I'm so excited to get the chance to spotlight you all. You do excellent work each day. Every week you're working hard and coming up with great ideas and suggestions and we really value having your input as fellows and training and as a colleague.

                                                Thank you for joining us today on our FIT podcast. Amit Khera standing in for Carolyn Lam. We look forward to seeing you for our next edition of Circulation on the Run. This program is copyright American Heart Association 2018.