Centre for Heart Lung Innovation marks 40 years
Pairing researchers with doctors sets facility apart, writes Dr. James Hogg.
Allowing pharmacists to assess and treat minor ailments in the community where patients live and work will expand access to primary care, reduce pressure on doctors and increase convenience for patients. Justin Bates, Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada
In the early 1970s, when I was a pathology professor at McGill University — home to one of North America’s most prestigious lung-research centres — I paid St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver a visit. I was impressed by its clinical and teaching programs that underpinned the hospital’s pulmonary care.
But I believed that research was an element that could make things even better.
In 1976, Dr. Peter Pare, who worked with me at McGill, and I were invited by St. Paul’s and the University of B.C. to set up a pulmonary research unit from scratch.
A year later, we opened the University of B.C. Pulmonary Research Laboratory at St. Paul’s with the support of the hospital, UBC, the B.C. Lung Association and the Medical Research Council of Canada. It was staffed with two principal investigators and an MSc research assistant named Lisa Baile. The space assigned was a cramped, underused nurses’ lockerroom, chosen because it had the best electrical fields for an electron microscope and the best potential for renovation and expansion.
By the 1980s, the lab housed $1-million worth of equipment and was raising more than $600,000 a year in outside funding.
In the 40 years since, what’s now known as the Centre for Heart Lung Innovation (HLI) is celebrating its evolution into a globally recognized research centre that currently investigates some of the most challenging problems facing people with both chronic heart and lung issues, and critical care illnesses.
Today, the HLI has 35 principal investigators and 250 other staff — lab technicians, grad students, visiting scientists and administrative staff. It attracts researchers from all over the world, many ranked tops in their fields. Since it was founded, three subsequent directors have guided it, each bringing his own expertise. Pare, who has studies asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), took over from me from 20002005. Dr. Bruce McManus, a cardiac pathologist with expertise in heart and bloodvessel inflammation and infection, was director from 2006-2012, while the current director since 2013 is Dr. Keith Walley, whose research focuses on sepsis.
This busy environment unites some of the best minds to address the science behind heart, lung and critical-care disease — conditions that tend to keep people in hospital for longer periods of time than others and are among the most expensive to treat.
We have made research breakthroughs related to the site and nature of airway obstruction in COPD to viral heart disease to changes in sepsis treatment practices around the globe. Dr. Don Sin has developed an online COPD assessment tool that shows a patient’s probability of developing mild, moderate or severe COPD over the next decade. The results allow therapies to be tailored to the patient. Dr. Jim Russell is researching whether sepsis can be treated with drugs to treat high cholesterol.
What distinguishes the centre from others is its ability to conduct clinically relevant medical research inside a busy teaching hospital. Doctors and researchers come together so patients get care while the knowledge about their illnesses is expanded through research. Our thinking is that one of the best ways to transfer knowledge from the scientists who generate it into medical practice is to involve those who take care of the patients in the research.
As we celebrate the four decades of HLI, we think about not only where it came from, but also where it’s headed. The HLI will be part of the redeveloped St. Paul’s Hospital, where it will tackle current and emerging categories of illness, many of which are likely to develop as the population ages. We will need to understand what patients suffering from these illnesses are going through and do the research to make our care to them the best it can be.
We also look forward to grooming future scientists through this centre by offering them mentorship and first-hand research experience. They’re the people who will carry the legacy of this research centre through the next 40 years and beyond.