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Duke Heart Pulse — December 7, 2025

By Tracey Koepke in Uncategorized on December 7, 2025

Chief’s message: Holiday Season and Big Sports Weekend

Duke had a great sports week this week. We saw the basketball team win an competitive and big game Tuesday night against Florida with a late three. (Picture to the right). The team then showed some composure late with a great road win against Michigan State yesterday. Even more exciting and potentially unexpected – the Blue Devils football team won the ACC with an OT win against Virginia yesterday. Great to see the teams do well and all the support from the fans in the area.

Duke Heart has also had some busy weeks to end the year with some final year end conferences – CVCT this week on clinical trials. We are also having our leadership group meet this week for a research retreat where we work on our research strategic plan. We are aligning our research work more tightly to our clinical missions to ensure we can build programs that are multi-disciplinary, self-sustaining, and eventually help us differentiate our care. We will share the outcomes of this work with our group and thank those engaged in it.

Highlights of the week:

Celebrating Duke Heart & Vascular

You will see fresh messaging throughout our Heart & Vascular units in Duke University Hospital, the Duke Medicine Pavilion, and Duke Clinics this week.

On Friday, we installed new wall clings in hallways and staff work areas in recognition of the excellent work our teams are doing each day. We hope you enjoy them!

Why Do You Study That? How to Heal a Broken Heart featuring Nenad Bursac

Duke Today featured the work of Nenad Bursac this week as part of their series, Why Do You Study That?

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and the world, and damage to the heart is hard to repair – often requiring surgery. But what if other treatments like gene therapy could offer new, less invasive approaches to heart care?

That is why Duke biomedical engineer Nenad Bursac is growing beating human heart tissue in a lab: to test these therapies. Using these patches of heart tissue as testbeds, his lab and collaborators can experiment. For example, the lab is testing a gene therapy that repairs heart tissue damaged from heart attacks. The effort has recently demonstrated positive results in nonhuman primates.

With funding from the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health, Bursac has been able to realize a lifelong goal: combining engineering with medicine to push innovation in heart care. The U.S., he says, is a unique place that attracts researchers from around the world like himself.

Working together and federal funding is critical to supporting continued improvements to health and wellness for America and the world. Check out the video here: Engineering Heart Tissue.

First Cardiac NICU opens at DUH

Congratulations to our pediatric cardiology colleagues! This week, Duke University Hospital opened a Cardiac NICU – the first of its kind in the state. This dedicated space is staffed with cardiac-trained nurses and supported by providers from Cardiology, the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU) and Neonatology for coordinated, specialized care for our cardiac patients.

A shout-out to the entire Duke Children’s team and to Kelly Ellington, Dr. Lakshami Katakam and Dr. Kevin Hill for recognizing the need and advancing the work to bring the vision to life. Great work!

Ginsburg, All of Us Research Program Update

Congratulations to Geoff Ginsburg, MD, PhD, chief medical and scientific officer for the All of Us research program at the NIH, and adjunct professor of medicine in cardiology at Duke. Ginsburg gave the opening plenary lecture on Sunday, Nov. 30 at the Radiological Society of North America’s (RSNA) 2025 Annual Meeting, held Nov. 30-Dec. 4, 2025 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

His lecture, The All of Us Research Program: Advancing Precision Medicine for the Nation, was covered in the conference’s Daily Bulletin.

Keep up the great work, Geoff!

ORA Announces Holiday Hours

The Office of Research Administration (ORA) will operate with reduced staff during the holidays. For transactions with sponsor due dates between December 22 and January 2, submit form to ORA by Monday, December 15. NOTE: The standard due date for NIH SBIR/STTR (R43/R44) is January 5, so the submission deadline to NIH is Monday, January 5, 2026 with the internal deadline at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, December 31, 2025. Please complete Intent to Submit no later than December 1, 2025 and route a submission-ready application no later than December 15, 2025.

Visitor Guidelines For Inpatient Areas

Please remember, all visitors of inpatient units, surgical areas, and the Emergency Department (ED) must obtain and wear a visitor badge. This also applies to Duke team members who are not assigned to these areas and are present solely to visit a patient. Inpatient and ED units follow similar standards; coordinate with patient information services in these areas to receive your visitor badge.

Upcoming Events & Opportunities

Cardiology Grand Rounds

Dec. 9: ValvEmergencies: Valve Disease and Cardiogenic Shock with Zach Wegermann, MD. 5 p.m., DN 2002 and via Zoom.

Dec. 16: Remodeling the Nerve-Heart Interface: Translating Neurobiology to Antiarrhythmic Therapy with Ching Zhu, MD. 5 p.m., DN 2002 and via Zoom.

CD Fellows Core Curriculum Conference

Dec. 10: EP Case Presentation with Mugdha Joshi and Chad Kloefkorn. Noon. DMP 7E39 and via Zoom.

Dec. 12: Board review with Nishant Shah and Anthony Lin. Noon, via Zoom.

Dec. 17: DHP Case Presentation with Verda Arshad. Noon. DMP 7E39 and via Zoom.

Dec. 19: DHP Case Presentation with Harriet Akunor. Noon, Zoom only.

MMCVI Grand Rounds

Multi-Modality Cardiovascular Imaging Grand Rounds: A multi-imaging approach to cardiovascular disease cases. Thursdays, Noon to 1 p.m., via Zoom.

Dec. 11: RV Failure or Pericardial Disease TBD with Cosette Champion

Dec. 18: TBD with Vincent Delgado

Dec. 25: NO CONFERENCE (Christmas)

Medicine Grand Rounds

Jan. 30: Quality and Safety at Duke: The Integral Role of the Department of Medicine with Drs. Mike Pignone and Rick Shannon. 8 a.m. Trent Semans Great Hall.

Upcoming CME Activities:

Duke Cardiovascular MR Practicum & Board Review – December 8-12

The Fall 2025 course will be held December 8-12 in the Penn Pavilion at Duke University. For more information, contact Michele Parker. The full course brochure and registration link are available here.

2026 Duke Heart CMEs

The dates for the following 2026 Duke Heart symposia have been set. We will announce others as they are added.

Duke Heart Failure Symposium – Saturday, June 6, 2026. Course directors are Marat Fudim, Rob Mentz, Richa Agarwal, and Stephanie Barnes. Location: Durham Convention Center, Durham, NC.
18^th Annual NC Research Triangle Pulmonary Hypertension Symposium – Friday, October 30, 2026. Course directors are Terry Fortin, Sudar Rajagopal, and Jimmy Ford. Location: Durham Convention Center, Durham, NC.

Please save the dates!

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 me 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:

November 26 — Kevin Thomas

Cardiovascular Business

Is the field of cardiology empowering or stifling? Cardiologists share their perspective

November 28 — Monique Starks

VICE

This Town Is Testing Drone-Delivered Defibrillators. Will It Work?

November 28 — Monique Starks

News Now Chicago

Drone-Delivered Defibrillators Launch in Clemmons, NC: Life-Saving Innovation

November 30 — Monique Starks

The Charlotte Observer