Inga Peter, PhD

In an essay in STAT, a leading online publication covering the life science industry, Inga Peter, PhD, Professor, Genetics and Genomic Sciences, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, writes about a new approach to drug discovery—sometimes called virtual repurposing—that offers a way to discover unknown connections between “unconnected” diseases that may lead to new treatments.

Dr. Peter is a genetic epidemiologist with extensive experience designing studies aimed at identifying  genetic risk factors associated with complex diseases such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Crohn’s disease.

Read the essay in STAT online

Learn more about the Peter Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine

Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD

A long-term international study led by researchers at Mount Sinai Heart is helping to establish an optimal standard of care for patients with diabetes and advanced multivessel coronary artery disease—a group at high risk for heart attack and stroke.

The FREEDOM Follow-On Study found that patients in this group who are treated with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) survive significantly longer than those treated with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with drug-eluting stents.

Over a period of seven and one-half years, mortality from all causes was 18.7 percent for the CABG group and 23.7 percent for the PCI cohort. The study found that younger patients fared the best, with the difference most significant for those under age 63. “These data support current recommendations that CABG be considered the preferred strategy for patients with diabetes and multivessel disease,” says the study’s principal investigator, Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart, and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital.

During CABG, a healthy artery or vein from the body is connected, or grafted, to the blocked coronary artery, providing a bypass around the blocked portion of the coronary artery. In PCI—a minimally invasive procedure also known as angioplasty—a catheter is threaded through the body to a blocked or occluded vessel in the heart. The occlusion is removed and a drug-eluting stent is often inserted to maintain flow within the blood vessel.

The FREEDOM Follow-On Study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in November 2018, is the successor to the FREEDOM (Future Revascularization Evaluation in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus: Optimal Management of Multivessel Disease) trial, which randomized 1,900 patients with diabetes. That original study, which concluded in 2012, found that individuals who have diabetes and advanced coronary artery disease live longer and are less likely to suffer a nonfatal heart attack when treated with CABG instead of PCI with drug-eluting stents. The median follow-up time of that trial—just under four years—was considered relatively short, however, because of the prolonged nature of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Consequently, Mount Sinai developed a longer-term follow-up study, and 25 of the original international centers agreed to participate, tracking data on the mortality of 943 patients from the original FREEDOM trial. Adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to die from heart disease than those without it, according to the American Heart Association.

In addition to confirming a standard of care for such patients, the study’s results underscore the importance of aggressive medical treatment and prevention to keep them from reaching advanced stages of diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol—forestalling the need for either CABG or PCI, Dr. Fuster says.

“We have to pay attention to how we can prevent this late stage of disease by taking care of obesity,” he says. “About 70 percent of these patients were obese, and we can do a lot to prevent this.”

Raymond Schinazi, PhD

Scientists whose revolutionary treatments have cured millions of people with hepatitis C and restored sight to patients with a rare form of blindness were among keynote speakers at the seventh annual SinaInnovations conference, held in Stern Auditorium during two consecutive days in October.

Innovation in science and medicine was the theme of this year’s SinaInnovations conference. The event highlighted the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s commitment to groundbreaking research and concluded its yearlong 50th anniversary celebration.

“This conference exemplifies Mount Sinai’s mission to produce the great translational research that improves the lives of our patients through innovation and entrepreneurship,” Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, said as he opened the event.

Katherine A. High, MD

Keynote speaker Raymond Schinazi, PhD, Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the Emory University School of Medicine, spoke about his part in developing an antiviral treatment for hepatitis C that has had a 96 percent cure rate and is considered to be one of the greatest successes in modern medicine. Dr. Schinazi also helped develop TRUVADA for PrEP®, a prophylactic drug that enables people to protect themselves before coming into contact with HIV-1. His next priority, he said, will be  developing a cure for hepatitis B, which affects 400 million people worldwide. “We can do this,” Dr. Schinazi said.

Katherine A. High, MD, President of Spark Therapeutics, spoke about development of a gene therapy for hemophilia and the creation of LUXTURNA™, a treatment for a rare form of blindness caused by a defective gene. Spark Therapeutics’ LUXTURNA is now the first gene therapy for an inherited disease to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission.

Sri Madabushi, PhD

The conference also featured a session on the promise of data-driven innovation that included Sri Madabushi, PhD, Business Development Director of Google AI Healthcare; and Eric Dishman, Director of the All of Us Research Program of the National Institutes of Health. All of Us is seeking to enroll more than 1 million Americans who will share their personal health data with researchers and clinicians who are advancing precision medicine.

Mr. Dishman said his personal experience is emblematic of the program’s goals. For 23 years, he battled a rare form of kidney cancer, enduring 57 rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Seven years ago, when he was near death, he had his genome sequenced, and physicians used that data to identify a pancreatic cancer drug that eradicated his disease. “Here I was, a wealthy, college-educated man who knows CEOs and senators, and I barely got access to precision medicine—at the 11th hour. What about everyone else?”

Access to quality health care was the focus of the final session at SinaInnovations. Kelly J. Kelleher, MD, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Public Health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that years ago, Nationwide became troubled by economic and health care disparities in a nearby neighborhood. “Some of our patients came from one of the areas most affected by violence, homelessness, drug addiction, and infant mortality, and I was offering a little bit of amoxicillin for ear infections,” Dr. Kelleher said. “This was unacceptable.” He said Nationwide has adopted a “neighborhood as patient” philosophy, working to incentivize doctors to keep patients healthy, support efforts to build affordable housing, and create job-training programs in the underserved community.

At the conclusion of SinaInnovations, conference leader Scott L. Friedman, MD, Dean for Therapeutic Discovery and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine, summed up the event’s overarching message of innovation.

“We are a great medical school working to fulfill great ambitions,” he said. “This conference was intended to reflect upon the history of our 50 years as a medical school and project into our future.”

A panel on Caring for the Community Through the Lifespan with, from left: R. Shaun Morrison, MD; Nina A. Bickell, MD; Nathan Goldstein, MD; Elizabeth Howell, MD; John Steever, MD; David Blumenthal, MD; Kelly J. Kelleher, MD; and Angela Diaz, MD, PhD.

Mount Sinai hosted its third annual Health Hackathon, an exciting health care innovation competition that ran from Friday, October 19, through Sunday, October 21. Participants included students from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and 12 other academic institutions, plus professionals with a wide range of backgrounds, such as clinical care, business, basic science, engineering, and software development.

They formed 16 teams that worked together over a 48-hour period to create innovative, technology-based solutions to problems in the field of rare diseases.

The winning teams:

Eye Can Do Technology that allows an immobile person to use eye movements to interact with devices in a smart-home environment.

Mango Tango A smartphone app, called Demeter, that helps patients with metabolic disorders track their diet and assess and manage symptoms.

Walk Thru An ambulatory walker with a portable attachment that helps the user get through self-closing doors without letting go of the walker.

“It’s pretty incredible what people can accomplish when they work with like-minded and not like-minded colleagues to create new ventures,” said Janice L. Gabrilove, MD, the James F. Holland, MD Professor of Medicine and Oncological Sciences, and Director, Clinical and Translational Research Education Program, Icahn School of Medicine.

The Health Hackathon is funded by ConduITS, the Institutes for Translational Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, with sponsorship from the software engineering company Persistent Systems. A diverse panel of judges chose three winning teams, which were each awarded a prize of $2,500. These teams, plus a fourth wild-card team, will be invited to participate in an Innovation Showcase sponsored by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners on February 14, 2019, where they will present their pitches to a panel of entrepreneurs.