September 2022

CARDIOVASCULAR

THE ROLE OF IRON IN CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE WITH HOSSEIN ARDEHALI, MD, PHD

Featuring: Hossein Ardehali, MD, PhD 
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death globally, and nearly half of all U.S. adults are currently at risk for heart attack and stroke. Hossein Ardehali, MD, PhD, is working to understand the role of iron and metabolic processes in cardiovascular disease and develop new therapies that target iron accumulation in people with CVD and many other chronic diseases. He is also the director of the Northwestern University Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) and is invested in guiding more students to careers as physician-scientists.  
“We’re hoping that our studies (with iron chelators and cardiovascular disease) in the preclinical phase, will guide us to translate those into clinical practice and treating patients with various chronic diseases. This kind of treatment is not just limited to coronary disease. We are hoping that if we see positive results, we will extend it to other chronic diseases, including neurological diseases and maybe other chronic diseases like cancer." — Hossein Ardehali, MD, PhD 

Episode Notes
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Iron has long been at the center of Ardehali’s research. He says while we have sophisticated our systems in the use of iron, it can still be very damaging to cells because it can cause oxidative stress. A major goal of his research is to find ways to reduce iron in chronic diseases and therefore reduce the oxidative stress that iron can cause.  
 
Topics covered in this show: 
  • In recent years cardiovascular disease has been the number one cause of death in the world. As recent as the 1970s, infectious diseases were the number one killer globally. This trend to cardiovascular disease (CVD) claiming the most lives every year was one reason why Ardehali became interested in CVD research and finding new treatments for CVD. 
  • He has long been fascinated with the role of iron in chronic diseases such CVD.  Ardehali says too much iron can lead to significant damage to the cells through oxidative stress. 
  • Iron accumulation can affect older people through atherosclerosis that can lead to vascular disease and neurological disease such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.  
  • Chemicals called iron chelators can bind to iron and make it inactive, which can help treat people with excess iron. Ardehali is working to find out how these iron chelators can target iron that accumulates specifically in mitochondria. His work is currently in animal models, but he hopes to bring it into human clinical trials to investigate iron chelator therapies for many chronic diseases, including cancer. 
  • As a physician scientist, Ardehali values the ability to relate his clinical practice to his research and vice versa. He believes it makes him more effective in both disciplines. 
  • Northwestern and MSTP are very supportive of physician scientists and growing the field, which is important as the overall number of physician scientists in the country is going down.
  • Ardehali is the past President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, an honor society for physician scientists. It provides resources and career support for promising young physician scientists. 
  • Aside from developing careers as physician scientists, he encourages his students to get involved in public policy. He says the voices and insight of physician scientists is needed when it comes to health care policy, to help elected officials make informed policy decisions.  
Additional Reading  
  • Read Ardehali's recent article published in the journal eLife: Aging is associated with increased brain iron through cortex-derived hepcidin expression.
  • More from Ardehali on the MSTP program at Feinberg
  • Read Ardehali’s article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: mRNA-binding protein tristetraprolin is essential for cardiac response to iron deficiency by regulating mitochondrial function.
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Recorded on May 11, 2022.
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This podcast was originally released by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in September 2022. 
Hossein Ardehali, MD, PhD 

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