Paolo POGGIO, Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS, Milan, Italy.

Paolo POGGIO, invited by Romain Capoulade (Eq I)

Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS, Milan, Italy.
Group Leader of the Unit for the Study of Aortic, Valvular, and Coronary Pathologies.

Lab Focus

Paolo Poggio leads the Unit for the study of Aortic, Valvular and Coronary Pathologies since January 2016. The Unit is involved in a broad range of basic and translational science research projects in order to improve diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular disease. The Unit main research objectives are: 1) to understand the molecular mechanisms involved in the calcification of the aortic valve and to discover new biomarkers able to identify patients before any symptoms occur and 2) to study the progression of mitral valve prolapse and to investigate new biomarkers able to identify the early phases of mitral regurgitation.

Abstract

The global impact of the spectrum of valve diseases is a crucial, fast-growing, and under recognized health problem. The most prevalent valve diseases, requiring surgical intervention, are characterized by fibro-calcific processes occurring in heart valves (aortic and mitral valve). Due to the increasing elderly population, these pathologies will gain weight in the global health burden. The two most common valve diseases are aortic valve stenosis (AS) and mitral valve regurgitation (MR). AS is the most commonly encountered valve disease nowadays and affects more than 3% of elderly population. In particular, as poses a great challenge due to the multiple comorbidities and frailty of this patient subset. MR is also a common valve pathology and has an estimated prevalence of almost 2% in the general population, affecting more than 150 million people worldwide.

Up to now, only clinical examination and cardiac imaging allow to identify these pathologies and, most of the time, these diseases are recognized only at advanced stages due to symptoms occurrence. Once patients experience any symptoms, the only available options are based on percutaneous or surgical intervention. However, these procedures only treat the symptoms, leaving the underling pathological processes untouched.

New molecular insights, in vivo and in vitro, could lead to the repositioning of know drugs or even to the development of new ones, while circulating biomarkers could help to identify high-risk patients before they reach the advanced stages of this debilitating and fatal pathologies.