Imagine a “biological pacemaker,” a simple injection that stimulates the heart to create its own healthy version of the cells that regulate rhythm. Or stem cell injections that help a damaged heart regenerate after a heart attack.
This is the groundbreaking work Hee Cheol Cho brings to the newly created position of director of research for the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Pediatric and Congenital Heart Center.
Cho also brings a vision for an ambitious new research model: “Working across disciplines is the secret sauce to developing a paradigm-changing therapy,” says Cho, an associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. “Figuring out how to successfully deliver a novel gene therapy, for instance, requires the expertise of many — from molecular biologists and material scientists to device engineers and surgeons.”
He believes that the center’s rapidly developing technologies, such as monitoring devices for babies and children and artificial intelligence-enabled predictive capabilities, can help minimize “research detours.” Cho’s biological pacemaker, for instance, has proven effective and safe in small and large animal studies, and human clinical trials are on the horizon. It is his hope that the synergies of the new research program could cut in half the five to 10 years it would normally take to get it approved for treating patients.
“It is humbling that it takes a village, really, to come up with a solution that can be delivered at the bedside and improve clinical care,” says Cho, who was raised in Seoul, South Korea, and moved with his family to Toronto when he was 19.
About seven years ago, Cho walked into a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit and, for the first time, saw a baby born with cardiac arrhythmia. “The baby had a pacemaker taped to his belly, and pacemaker wires were going through his chest just to keep the baby alive,” he says. “I began to feel a mandate, because there are many patients, especially newborns and children with congenital heart disease, who really don’t have a better way to pace their heart.”
Danielle Gottlieb Sen, one of the country’s leading pediatric heart surgeons, helped recruit Cho to the new post at Johns Hopkins. “He is really special,” she says. “He not only does terrific research that’s novel and not commonly undertaken — because it’s hard — but he also has a connection to families who need his paradigm-changing technology, and that connection to patients and their families is unusual for someone who’s not a clinician.”
Cho says the energy at the Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Heart Center is palpable, and he is enormously excited about the potential to “catapult research innovations to clinical implementation." He says, "I believe that we are well positioned to capitalize on our innovations so that our patients not only survive, but thrive.”