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Duke Heart Pulse — May 18, 2025

By Tracey Koepke in Uncategorized on May 18, 2025.

Highlights of the week:

Duke Heart Earns 6^th MVRR Center Award

We are thrilled to announce that our mitral valve program has earned the 2025 Mitral Valve Repair Reference (MVRR) Center Award — it is the sixth consecutive year for this recognition from the Mitral Foundation.

Mitral valve repair is one of the most challenging heart operations, but the results for patients with degenerative mitral valve disease can be outstanding, with improved survival and few long-term complications. The recommended treatment for degenerative mitral valve disease is mitral valve reconstruction, as opposed to valve replacement with a bioprosthetic or mechanical valve because valve repair is associated with improved survival and fewer long-term complications. Many patients who would benefit from repair receive replacement valves, with higher rates of death or complications within five years after surgery.

Based on 2024 data (the 2025 list is not yet publicly available), Duke was one of only 22 centers in the U.S. recognized by the Mitral Foundation as having the volume and outcomes needed to qualify as an MVRR Center.

The MVRR Center designation recognizes those centers that have a demonstrated record of superior clinical outcomes, as well as an ongoing commitment to reporting and measuring quality and outcome metrics specific to mitral valve repairs. It also serves to promote the availability of such MVRR Centers to improve geographic access for patients across the U.S.

Congratulations to our extraordinary mitral valve team and Drs. Don Glower, Jeff Gaca, Brittany Zwischenberger, Andrew Wang, and our MitraClip team for the outstanding work they are doing for all of our mitral patients!

Blazing Receives Clinical Excellence Award

Congratulations to Mike Blazing, MD, associate professor of medicine in cardiology! Blazing is one of seven Department of Medicine (DOM) faculty members selected as 2025 inductees to the DOM’s Clinical Excellence Society.

Annually, the DOM recognizes faculty who exemplify exceptional dedication to patient care, innovation in clinical practice, and the training of future physicians. Membership in the Department’s Clinical Excellence Society honors individuals who have demonstrated outstanding clinical skill, leadership, and commitment to advancing the practice of medicine. These clinicians are selected for their impact on patient outcomes, contributions to clinical innovation, and efforts to mentor and support the next generation of healthcare providers.

Blazing was nominated by cardiology division chief Manesh Patel, MD, who wrote “Dr. Blazing is not just reserved for the many faculty members who seek him out as their doctor, but open to any patient with a cardiac problem. He has modeled his professional practice as the standard, always taking on the hardest patients and toughest assignments in the best interest of patients and Duke’s cardiology practice. His communication with patients is effortless, and he always finds a way to connect with his patients, focusing on their needs, allowing him to direct them to optimal, evidence-based care.”

Congratulations, Mike! Well-deserved!

New Cardiovascular Funding Awards, April 2025

Congratulations to the following faculty members in the Division of Cardiology who received new funding award notifications in April:

Sponsored research:

Robert McGarrah III has received a sub-award (1OT2HL156812-01) through the DCRI-Duke-Site for a project entitled “RECOVER-ENERGIZE.”

Industry Sponsored Clinical Trials:

James Daubert has received an award from Rocket Pharmaceuticals, Ltd for a project entitled “The Natural History of Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy with Pathogenic PKP2 Variants (PKP2-ACM): An observational cohort study.” Total funding will be $201,026.
Marat Fudim has received an award from AstraZeneca AB for a project entitled “A Phase III, Randomised, Double-blind Study to Evaluate the Effect of Balcinrenone/Dapagliflozin, Compared with Dapagliflozin, on the Risk of Heart Failure Events and Cardiovascular Death in Patients with Heart Failure and Impaired Kidney Function.” Total funding will be $232,815.
Christopher Granger has received an award from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals for a project entitled “KARDIA-6 CVOT SUA.” Total funding will be $17,952,477.
Schuyler Jones has received an award from Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation for a project entitled “V-Intervention.” Total funding will be $41,317,740.
Michel Khouri has received an award from Moleculin Biotech, Inc. for a project entitled “MB-108 (Core Lab).” Total funding will be $2,029,841.
Daniel Mark has received an award from Cytokinetics, Inc. for a project entitled “Comet-HF Health Economics.” Total funding will be $1,407,475.
Andrew Wang has received an award from Lexicon Pharmaceuticals for a project entitled “SONATA-HCM A Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-controlled, Parallel-group, Multicenter Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of SOtaglifloziN in symptomATic obstructive And non-obstructive Hypertrophic CardioMyopathy (SONATA-HCM).” Total funding will be $207,376.

Congratulations to all!

Duke Heart EKG Team Competes in DUH “Feud”

Congratulations to Duke Heart’s EKG Support Unit for sending a team to compete in Duke Hospital’s “Team Feud” on May 8, 2025! Team Feud is one of many events taking place across Duke this month and is modeled after the television game show “Family Feud.” The competition took place in Duke South Amphitheater and was hosted by emcee Jonathan Bae, MD, associate professor of medicine and a hospitalist at Duke.

The Five Heart Beats included EKG Support Unit team members Lyka Woods; Bernice Whitaker; Kimberly Starkey; Russ Burnett, and Denita Green (shown L-R, above).

“I am so thankful that my team and I got to participate in Team Feud during Celebrating Each Other month,” said Starkey, clinical operations supervisor of the EKG Support Unit at Duke University Hospital. “Times like this allow us to step away from our busy daily tasks to enjoy some fun. We had an amazing time, we won our round and we can’t wait to do it again!”

The Five Heart Beats competed against the Divine Interventions, a group of staff members from Duke Hospital’s Chaplain Services and Education team, and our Duke Heart EKG specialists won the round.

Solid work!

Senthil Selvaraj, MD: Improving HF Outcomes Through Metabolic Research

For Senthil Selvaraj, MD, a heart failure physician-scientist in the Duke Heart Center, and an assistant professor of medicine in the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute and the Division of Cardiology, the path to improving care for patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) starts with a deceptively simple question: what does the heart and skeletal muscle actually use for fuel—and can we change that?

HFpEF affects more than half of all people with heart failure and is notoriously difficult to treat. These patients retain normal pumping function but still experience debilitating symptoms like shortness of breath and reduced ability to exercise.

“HFpEF is a systemic problem,” Dr. Selvaraj explains. “It’s not just the heart. It’s also skeletal muscle, blood vessels, and the body’s metabolism.”

Recent studies have shown that failing hearts rely more heavily on ketones, a type of energy source the body normally produces in small amounts during fasting or metabolic stress. Inspired by that discovery, Dr. Selvaraj began testing whether raising ketone levels on purpose—through exogenous ketone drinks—could help HFpEF patients function better.

He recently led a clinical trial known as “KETO-HFpEF”, published in JACC: Heart Failure, which tested the effects of a single dose of ketone therapy vs. placebo in patients with HFpEF. The study did not show improvements in exercise performance, but the treatment led to several potentially beneficial physiologic changes, such as lower heart pressures, shifts in metabolism away from carbohydrate utilization, and increased heart rate during exercise.

“These findings were intriguing,” he says. “We didn’t see a direct improvement in exercise capacity, but we saw a lot of changes that may be relevant.”

From Proof-of-Concept to Longer-Term Impact

Selvaraj is now preparing to launch a new trial to test whether longer-term ketone supplementation might do what a single dose could not. The upcoming study, supported by a Swann Lee Award through the Duke School of Medicine, will follow 20 HFpEF patients over an eight-week period using a crossover, double-blind, placebo-controlled design. Participants will receive a commercially available ketone drink, (R)-1,3-butanediol (KetoneIQ), and undergo testing to evaluate changes in exercise capacity, cardiac function, metabolic health, and vascular stiffness. This research team includes Heart Center faculty Drs. Svati Shah, Robert Mentz, and Neha Pagidipati.

“Exercise intolerance in heart failure is driven by multiple overlapping issues,” he says. “That’s why we’re investigating ketone therapy—which has the potential to address several pathophysiologies at once.”

Selvaraj also studies how the heart consumes fuel in real time. In a translational research project at Duke, he and his colleagues collect paired blood samples from the arteries and veins of the heart to measure what nutrients the heart consumes. This work, done in collaboration with Drs. Marat Fudim, Imran Islam, Zach Loring, and Dan Friedman, helps map the heart’s metabolic profile across the spectrum of cardiovascular health.

Research with a Broader Purpose

Selvaraj traces his interest in heart failure back to his third year of medical school, when he first began working in the field. His early work focused on large-scale clinical trial data, but he has since shifted toward leading his own investigator-initiated studies—smaller in scale, but rich in mechanistic insight.

He credits much of his growth as a researcher to the mentorship of Dr. Svati Shah and sees his current work as part of a broader effort to redefine how metabolic therapies are used in cardiovascular disease.

“Ketones are a natural substrate, something our bodies already make,” he says. “If we can harness that safely and effectively, we may be able to offer patients a new option—one that works across systems, not just on the heart alone.” Beyond ketone therapy, altering metabolism with other therapies (i.e. SGLT2 inhibitors and GLP-1 receptor agonists) has already underscored the relevance of this line of inquiry.

(This story was published May 7 by the Dept. of Medicine.)

Hernandez, Spaeder Present PTC Grand Rounds

On Friday, May 16, Adrian Hernandez, MD, MHS professor of medicine in cardiology and executive director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, joined Jeffrey Spaeder, MD, MBA, chief medical and scientific officer at IQVIA, to present the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory’s (PTC) Rethinking Clinical Trials Grand Rounds lecture. Their presentation was entitled, “Pivoting Clinical Trials Into a New and Evolving World.”

Hernandez serves as co–principal investigator of the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory Coordinating Center.

This Week: CGRs on Monday with Yamanaka, Tuesday with Osude

Don’t forget to join us for a special Cardiology Grand Rounds session on Monday evening, May 19^th. Our guest will be Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the L.K. Whittier Foundation Investigator in Stem Cell Biology at the University of California, San Francisco. His CGR topic is Recent Progress in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPS) Cell Research and Application.

Yamanaka is a co-recipient of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that mature cells can be reprogrammed into a stem cell state, offering a way to generate pluripotent stem cells without using embryos. He shared the prize with Sir John B. Gurdon of the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge.

On Tuesday evening, May 20, we’ll hear from Duke cardiovascular fellow Nkiru Osude, MD, who will present The Solution: Quality in Healthcare.

Both sessions begin at 5 p.m. More details under Upcoming Events, below.

New NIH Public Access Policy Effective July 1, 2025

Researchers holding federal funding should be aware of critical updates to the NIH Public Access Policy that will take effect on July 1, 2025.

Originally scheduled to go into effect on December 31, 2025, these changes have been expedited by the federal government, and it is imperative that researchers understand and comply with the new requirements to avoid jeopardizing their current and future funding opportunities.

Key Changes to Note:

Immediate Submission to PubMed Central: Researchers must submit their Author Accepted Manuscripts to PubMed Central without delay. This ensures that research is accessible to the public as soon as possible.
No Embargo Period: There will no longer be an embargo period for journals. Full-text must be made publicly available in PubMed Central upon publication.
Impact on Funding: Non-compliance with these new requirements could affect current and future funding opportunities, including grant renewals. It is crucial to adhere to these guidelines to maintain funding status.
No Cost to Authors: Authors can submit their manuscript files to PubMed Central at no cost, regardless of whether they have published open access or not.

Researchers with NIH funding are encouraged to take this matter seriously and make the necessary preparations to make sure their manuscripts accepted for publication on or after July 1, 2025 comply with the new NIH Public Access Policy.

For more information on the NIH Public Access Policy compliance submission process, please see Duke Medical Center Library & Archives’ NIH Public Access Policy Guide. If you have any questions or need assistance, do not hesitate to reach out to the NIH Public Access Policy team at the Medical Center Library (nihpublicaccesscompliance@duke.edu).

DUHS Updates:

Padilla Appointed DUHS CNSBOO

Blanca “Iris” Padilla, PhD, MBA, MSN, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP has been appointed as the new Chief Nursing Strategic Business Operations Officer (CNSBOO) at Duke University Health System.

In this role, Padilla will be pivotal in shaping the strategic direction of nursing services, ensuring alignment with economic, financial and business objectives and driving innovation in transforming models of patient care, workforce management, and financial sustainability.

Padilla is an Associate Professor at the Duke University School of Nursing with extensive experience in trauma-critical care, emergency department, and primary care. Her education includes a PhD from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, a postdoctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from Elon University.

Congratulations, Iris!

Empowerment Through Innovations Launched by DUHS NPCS

DUHS Nursing and Patient Care Services (NPCS) is excited to launch Empowerment Through Innovations — a new systemwide initiative created to spark real change from the frontlines. All nursing and patient care services teams are invited to share ideas that can improve how we deliver care, support our teams, and solve everyday challenges. The program recognizes the everyday innovators across Duke Health, one idea at a time. It embodies our commitment to Put People First by listening and seeking out new ideas. It also reflects our pledge to Be Clear and Empower by trusting the values and perspectives of those closest to the work and turning ideas into action.

Do you see something that could be better? Visit the Empowerment Through Innovations intranet site to learn more and submit your ideas.

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

May is: American Stroke Month, Jewish Heritage Month, and National Asian Pacific American Month

May is also: Celebrating Each Other month at Duke

Cardiology Grand Rounds

May 19: Recent Progress in iPS Cell Research and Application with Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka of the Gladstone Institute for Cardiovascular Disease; the University of California, San Francisco, and Kyoto University. 5 p.m. DN 2002 or via Zoom.

May 20: The Solution: Quality in Healthcare with Nkiru Osude. 5 p.m., Zoom only.

If you missed any of our CGR’s from the past year, all Duke Cardiology Grand Rounds recordings are housed on Warpwire. To access recordings please visit:

NET ID and password are required. Enjoy!

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

May 21: HF/Tx with Cosette Champion. Noon. In-person. DN 2001

May 23: EKG with Neil Freedman. Noon. Zoom only.

May 28: EP with Hannah Schwennesen and Jemi Galani. Noon, in person. DMP 7E39.

May 30: TBD

Upcoming Duke Heart CMEs

The following CME activities, sponsored by Duke Heart, have been scheduled. Registration coming soon; now open for June 7^th symposia.

June 7, 2025: Duke Heart Failure Symposium (live event at Durham Convention Center in Durham). Registration is required.
October 4, 2025: Duke Cardiac Sonography Symposium (live event at Trent Semans Center)
October 31, 2025: 17th Annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium (live event at Durham Convention Center)

Have news to share?

If you have news to share with the Pulse readership, please contact Tracey Koepke, director of communications for Duke Heart & Vascular at tracey.koepke@duke.edu. We would love to hear about your latest accomplishments, professional news, cool happenings, and any events or opportunities that may be of interest to our team. Please call with any questions: 919-681-2868. Feedback on Pulse is welcome and encouraged. Submissions by Noon on Wednesdays will be considered for weekend inclusion.

Duke Heart in the News:

May 9 — Duke Health

WFMY News 2 (Greensboro, NC)

Branson’s mission: Filling Duke’s treasure box with hope and joy

May 9 — Stephen Greene

Espanol News

Los beneficios de los inhibidores de SGLT2 para HF afirmados en un estudio grande en el mundo real

May 12 — Audrey Blewer

The Kansas City Star

Fast action from bystanders can improve cardiac arrest survival. Many don’t know what to do

May 13 — Sean Pokorney

Medscape