March 10, 2005
Rushmer lecturer to speak on ‘Engineering the Heart’
Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, a world leader in heart and lung transplant surgery and research, will speak at the 17th annual Rushmer Lecture, sponsored by the UW Department of Bioengineering.
Yacoub will present “Engineering the Heart” on Friday, April 1, at 4 p.m. in Turner Auditorium (D-209), at the Health Sciences Center. The lecture is open to everyone.
As a surgeon, Yacoub is known for his innovative techniques. He spearheaded the transformation of Great Britain’s Harefield Hospital into a premier transplant center. In the late 1960s, his team pioneered use of human heart valves as replacements, an improvement over the existing artificial valves. He was lead surgeon for one of the world’s first heart/lung transplants in 1983, performed one of the first heart transplants on a newborn in 1984, and in 1987 performed the first “domino” procedure, involving multiple patients and organs. Additional pioneering work was done on the “switch” operation, which transposes congenitally misconnected heart arteries.
Yacoub is interested in the intersection of surgery with basic science and engineering and has made major contributions to the literature. In 2002 alone, the year after his retirement from Great Britain’s National Health Service, he was author or co-author on at least 33 publications, a book, and two chapters. He established the Harefield Research Foundation (renamed the Magdi Yacoub Institute) in the 1990s to advance cardiac research and now directs the work of over 60 leading scientists there who investigate the molecular and cellular mechanisms of cardiac disease. He is British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Imperial College School of Medicine. In addition to these teaching and research activities, he continues to serve cardiac patients, especially children, in developing countries through the Chain of Hope charity.
Promising directions in heart valve tissue engineering are discussed in a February 2005 Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine Viewpoint article co-authored by Yacoub. The authors predict intensified need for valve replacements, especially in developing countries. Current replacement valves cannot perform the complicated functions of normal valves, which are dynamic systems of cells with varying gene expression in association with an extracellular matrix, all engaged in “cross talk” and interaction with environmental factors. The Nature article proposes using nanotechnology to design biodegradable valve matrices to be populated with appropriate cell types modified genetically to aid immune system acceptance.
The annual lecture was endowed in 1985 to honor Dr. Robert F. Rushmer, an extraordinary mentor and trailblazer who founded the UW Center for Bioengineering in 1967. The Center became the Department of Bioengineering, administered through the School of Medicine and the College of Engineering, in 1997. Rushmer’s efforts also affected the local biomedical industry, the UW technology transfer process, and the Washington Research Foundation. Rushmer was widely recognized for his groundbreaking work in ultrasound, physiology, and cardiac research. He died in 2001 at the age of 86.
