2011 Annual Report - Summa Health System

“The orchestra is in place, but there is Through clinical trials and extensive
no conductor.”
research, Dr. Penn and his associates set
out to find that conductor and a decade
Ten years ago, Marc Penn, M.D., later, they identified one known as
Ph.D., FACC, renowned cardiologist, SDF1 and completed the
director of research at Summa
first clinical trial studying
Cardiovascular Institute and professor its effects in patients with
of medicine and integrative medical heart failure. He and his
sciences at Northeast Ohio Medical team conducted further
University (NEOMED) and his team research to determine how
of researchers hypothesized the human that conductor can repair
body tries to repair itself with stem the damage caused by
f o r o u r p h y s i c i a n s a n d p a t i e n t s .
cells when it’s injured. The challenge myocardial infarction and minimize or
is that it is clinically inefficient. Many eradicate the long-term effects of heart
in the medical community argued the failure for patients who may live with
inefficiency was due to a lack of stem this condition for many years.
cells. Dr. Penn argued it was clinically
inefficient because the body lacked the The type of research Dr. Penn and
signals that trigger stem cells to start his team are conducting is known as
the healing process – thus the analogy regenerative medicine, broadly defined
of an orchestra (the stem cells) with no as medical therapies that enable the
conductor (the trigger).
body to repair, replace and/or restore
damaged or diseased cells, tissues and
organs. He and his colleagues are
undertaking a number of studies to
determine if and/or how the heart can
heal after a major acute incident such
as a myocardial infarction. They also
are adding to the body of work that
addresses the issues of chronic disease
management
for cardiac
conditions.
“Medicine
has become
very good at
treating acute
diseases,” said
Dr. Penn.
“The 30-day mortality rate for an
acute heart attack dropped from about
15 percent 20 years ago to under five
percent. The good news is people live.
The challenge is they live to have more
heart attacks and chronic heart failure.
Medicine has transitioned from acute
illness to chronic disease management.
Heart failure is burgeoning because
patients survive those acute incidents
and now have weak or damaged hearts
for the rest of their lives. The goal of
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