Dr Cassandra Malecki – Post-Doctoral Fellow – The Baird Institute
As a post-doctoral fellow at The Baird Institute, I have been extremely fortunate to contribute to important and exciting research over the past 18 months. I have an interest in trying to understand how our heart and vessels change as we age. We know that age is one of the biggest risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease and therefore understanding the changes that occur at a molecular level will assist in the development of preventative and therapeutic options for age related cardiovascular disease such as heart failure and atherosclerosis.
Our comprehensive study comparing proteins, metabolites, lipids and thousands of genes between younger and older hearts was recently accepted for publication in Aging Cell, a leading journal in the aging field. This was an extremely exciting achievement, as this is the first study to characterise the molecular patterns of normal human cardiac aging. We hope that our paper and data will serve as an essential resource for all those with an invested interested in unravelling the complex landscape of human cardiac aging.
This paper on human cardiac aging was submitted to the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ) for consideration of the Ralph reader prize, a prestigious prize for early career researchers given at their Annual scientific conference. I was chosen as one of the three finalists and was honoured to be able to present my research at the conference. The presentation received an immense amount of positive feedback, sparking many insightful and scientifically rich conversations.
Currently, I am now working on a project investigating how the aorta, our largest blood vessel, changes as we age. We have looked at the expression of thousands of proteins in healthy aortas from people ranging from 10 to 65 years old and have analysed how they change with age. We have seen that several key proteins important for the strength and structure of the aortic wall decrease as we age. I am currently writing up the study to submit for publication working on designing experiments to further characterise the changes in these proteins.
In addition to my research in cardiovascular aging, I also have a role in managing the Sydney Heart Bank, an essential resource of human cardiovascular tissue, which has been pivotal in numerous research projects being conducted by our research lab. I have been involved in helping with multiple projects and over the past 18 months several of these studies have been published in highly respected scientific journals. This highlights the importance of utilising the tissue of the Syndey Heart Bank in well-designed studies to further our understanding of cardiovascular disease.
I am extremely grateful for the continuing generosity of the supporters of the Baird Institute; whom without, this exciting research would not be possible.
Investigating The Long-Term Outcomes After Cardiac Surgery
Dhairya Vayada, Data Research Assistant
The Baird Institute team is working on investigating the long-term outcomes after cardiac surgery. This is a data intensive project, linking our internal hospital database with a larger database of all hospitalisations, emergency presentations and mortalities in NSW. The broad goal of this project is to understand what happens to patients in the long term (>5 years) after cardiac surgery.
As a part of this project, we are investigating the long-term outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. CABG surgery is one of the most frequently performed cardiac surgeries worldwide and is a cornerstone in the management of coronary artery disease. In this procedure, blockages in patient’s coronary arteries – arteries which supply blood to the heart, are bypassed using veins or arteries from other parts of the body. This bypass restores blood flow to the heart, restoring the function, viability of the muscle and providing symptomatic relief from chest pain. There are two main types of CABG performed – ‘on-pump’, where a cardiopulmonary bypass circuit is used to circulate blood and the patient’s heart is stopped, and ‘off-pump’, where the procedure is conducted on a beating heart. Furthermore, this procedure can be done as an isolated procedure, or in combination with valve surgery.
While these are routinely performed surgeries, analysis of the long-term data will help in developing an understanding of the clinical course and improve survival outcomes and quality of life for the patients.
In this project, patients who have undergone an isolated CABG procedure in the hospital database will be identified. After linkage with the broader NSW database, information about each patient’s hospitalisations, emergency presentations and mortality will be collected. Demographic information about each CABG group (on-pump and off-pump) will be obtained and compared. Survival analysis will then be conducted to explore survival trends >5 years after the surgery. Importantly, leading causes of cardiac-related re-hospitalisations and re-interventions will also be analysed, providing valuable information on the clinical course and major risks for these patients after surgery.
The results will shortly be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented as a poster at the 2025 Tri-Society Cardiac & Thoracic Symposium (3SCTS).
