‘Going local’ seems to be an emerging trend in buying produce and supporting businesses, but researchers in Singapore are applying the principle to heart health research. Scientists are setting up a bank of genetic material and tissue from thousands of local heart patients, with the aim of sifting through the 130 genes known to be involved in heart disease, in order to uncover better ways of preventing, diagnosing and treating it.
A similar venture is already ongoing in Britain, and here we have so far collected 4,000 samples from patients with various aspects of poor heart health. This includes those whose hearts are not pumping properly, those at risk of sudden cardiac death, heart attack victims and those with clogged arteries. The Singaporean branch of the project will be helmed by the National Heart Centre Singapore and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School.
Although he will continue to spend roughly a quarter of his time in Britain, Professor Stuart Cook, a cardiologist and researcher who pioneered the British project, moved to Singapore recently to jump-start the local effort. He said, ‘With current technology, we can go through the 130 genes involved in heart disease in hours. It used to take six months to get the result of just one gene.’
Those involved in the project also hope to improve the wellbeing of those at risk of strokes. By collecting tissue samples from about 250 patients undergoing bypass operations every year, researchers could study the cell molecules with the goal of finding out why the heart rhythm goes awry and why people get strokes. Professor Cook also plans to get advanced cardiac imaging into the mix for studying, screening and diagnosing heart wellness diseases. He said that this is because cardiac MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) provides extremely accurate images and videos of the structure and function of the heart without the radiation that comes with some other regular imaging technologies.
Associate Professor Terrance Chua, deputy medical director of the heart centre, affirmed that the centre was planning to install a cardiac MRI machine to support the research. ‘With the expertise of Prof Cook and our team of cardiologists and radiologists, this state-of-the-art heart scanner will provide many insights into heart disease that can help our patients through a better understanding of complex disease processes,’ he said. He added that the reason for ‘going local’ was that understanding diseases in the Singaporean context may not be the same as in Western countries: ‘For example, the genetics of heart disease locally may be different from the West, and this could be potentially useful in the diagnosis of heart disease.’
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