On 5th December 2018, US-China Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Forum was held in Crowne Plaza. The forum was held by Center for Precision Medicine Multi-omics Research (CPMMR), and sponsored by ThermoFisher and Beijing Huatai Technology & Development Co., Ltd.
CPMMR was officially launched in June 2018 with the support of “Double First-Class” funding. It is directly affiliated to Peking University Health Science Center. Professor Catherine CL Wong serves as the director of the center. The center focuses on the clinical and biomedical research. Through the intersection of clinical medicine, innovative technology and basic research, the center aims to provide the new direction to solve clinical and biomedical problems.
The forum was carried out under the strategic concept of "Clinical Medicine+X" development plan of Peking University initiated by Academician Qimin Zhan. In the future, CPMMR will successively hold a series of disease-related forums with "Integration, Trans-boundary, Interdiscipline and Innovation" as the core themes, and make continuous efforts to building an authoritative, representative and sustainable international academic exchange platform in the field of precision medicine.
The kick-off of the academic platform is themed with “Heart” - the most important organ in the body. It was presided by Professor Catherine CL Wong, director of CPMMR. More than 100 top experts in cardiovascular-related fields from US and China attended the forum and presented an unusually high-level academic feast through the interdiscipline of clinical medicine, innovative technology and basic science. It may ultimately contribute to promoting the development of innovative research, and improving the level of clinical diagnosis and treatment.
Speakers presenting at the forum mainly include: Professor John. R. Yates (Department of Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Center, La Jolla), Professor Peipei Ping (Director, NIH BD2K Center of Excellence at UCLA), Professor Jennifer Van Eyk (Director, Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), Professor Ruiping Xiao (Director, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Peking University), Professor Yongjun Wang (Executive vice president, Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University), Professor Ming Xu (Cardiology Department, Peking University Third Hospital), Professor Changtao Jiang (Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Peking University Health Science Center). Leaders participating the forum maily include: Professor Shumei Zhu (Deputy president, the Party Committee of Peking University Health Science Center), Professor Pengyuan Wang (Vice president, Peking University First Hospital), and Professor Haixia Li (Director, Laboratory Department, Peking University First Hospital). Experts from Peking University Health Science Center, Peking University First Hospital, Peking University Third Hospital, Beijing Cancer Hospital, Capital Medical University and its affiliated hospitals, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other departments of Peking University have all given great support to the forum.
Dr. Ruiping Xiao, Director of Institute of Molecular Science, Peking University, awarded “Changjiang Scholar” by Ministry of Education, gave the opening remarks. She congratulated the forum on its successful convening, and expressed high recognition of its significance, which encouraged application of omic technologies to investigating major diseases. She pointed out that cardiovascular diseases pose a great threat to humans, and there are still many unsolved problems in clinical research, such as drug target identification, biomarker screening and clinical diagnosis. She emphasized the concept of "Precision Medicine" and appealed to the experts present to make collaborative efforts in order to tackle cardiovascular problems.
Dr. John. R. Yates, Professor of Department of Chemical Biology in The Scripps Research Center, La Jolla, “Godfather” of the International proteomics community, Chief editor of Journal of Proteome Research, gave a speech representative of the basic scientific research community. The topic is “Interactome of Mutant Cystic Fibrosis Ion Transport Regulator (CFTR) Reveals Disease Specific Interactions and PTMs”. In nearly 40 minutes of brilliant speech, Professor Yates systematically and thoroughly introduced his work of studying the role of CFTR protein in the pathogenesis of cystic fibrosis. In Q&A session, Prof. John gave detailed answers on mass spectrometry technology, the discovery process of SEQUEST software and the development prospects of proteomics. He predicted that proteomics would have broad prospects in drug research and development in the future.
Subsequently, Professor Ruiping Xiao gave a speech entitled “A Novel Myokine MG53 and Cardio Metabolic Diseases”, reporting on her achievements in the study of cardiovascular metabolic diseases. She showed the whole process of how she focused on the molecular mechanism of MG53, deeply studied the root causes of cardio metabolic diseases, and finally completed the transformation research.
Dr. Liping Liu from Neurology Center of Beijing Tiantan Hospital, representing Professor Yongjun Wang, gave a speech on the theme of “Cerebrovascular Disease: Evidence-based to Accurate”. The results in CHANCE queue were published in The New England Journal of Medicine and included in the International Guidelines for the treatment of ischemic stroke. Professor Liu’s talk also underlined the significance of retrospective clinical research to basic research and precise treatment research. She believed that the remaining clinical problems are promising to be solved by multi-omics research. The speech received unanimous praise from the audience.
In the afternoon, Dr. Peipei Ping, Director of NIH BD2K Center of Excellence at UCLA, delivered a speech on the theme of “Oxidative Stress Post-translational Modification Landscape in Cardiac Hypertrophy Revealed by Machine Learning Approaches”. Her talk put forward a new perspective of how the bioinformatics method of machine learning may combine with the integrated proteomics technology and also how it can be applied in the field of cardiovascular diseases. As an interdisciplinary expert, she demonstrated high academic literacy and a broad vision for the frontier of scientific developments.
Dr. Ming Xu, Professor from Cardiology Department, Peking University Third Hospital, gave a wonderful speech on “Multidisciplinary Research on the Excitation- Contraction Structure and Function Remodeling in Heart Failure”. Taking the discovery of therapeutic targets for heart failure as an example, he showed the audience the transformation course from basic scientific research to clinical treatment, and introduced the progress of cardiovascular project research in China during the recent years.
Dr. Jennifer Van Eyk, Director of Advanced Clinical Biosystems Institute in the Department of Biomedical Sciences from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, delivered a talk entitled with “Medicine and Me: moving towards proteomics-centric individualize”. As one of the worldwide top hospitals, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is well-known for its outstanding achievements in medical research and innovation. Professor Eyk believed that disease is essentially a phenomenon of proteome expression, so the regulation of proteome is quite necessary in medical research. Individualized biomarkers and treatments is essential for precision medicine, and particularly important for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. She introduced the progress of her institute on the basic research of disease mechanism and treatment, in which a large number of proteomic techniques were applied. She also put forward the remaining problems in precision medicine, and encouraged the audience to think about the transformation from technology to clinical application.
Dr. Changtao Jiang, Professor of Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology, Peking University Health Science Center, gave the last speech on “Modification of gut microbiota and ceramide signaling alleviates metabolic disorders”. Recently, Professor Jiang’s work was published on Nature Medicine entitled “Gut microbiota and intestinal FXR mediate the clinical benefits of metformin”. The impact factor of the journal is 32.261.
