Figures of the Heart Failure Association (HFA): Prof. Dr. med. Thomas Thum, Chair of the ESC Working Group on Myocardial Function and Ex-Officio HFA Board Member (2018–2020)

Thomas Thum has recently joined the Board of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC); he is the current Chair of the ESC Working Group on Myocardial Function. As such he has just organized, together with the Working Group on Cellular Biology of the Heart, the Biennial Joint Meeting of both Working Groups, this year for the first time in the city of Naples, dedicated to ‘Bench to Bedside 4.0 - New therapeutic entry points to fight cardiovascular disease’. The meeting was supported by the HFA and two sessions were provided by the Heart Failure Specialists of Tomorrow and the Scientists of Tomorrow, respectively, and proved to contribute to the great success of the meeting. Thomas' further commitment to the ESC includes his activity as an Editorial Board member of Cardiovascular Research. Thomas Thum studied medicine in Hannover, with state examination and medical thesis in 2001 and board examination for internal medicine/cardiology in 2009/2010. He received his PhD at the Imperial College, London, UK (2008). Thomas pursued his clinical and postdoctoral training in Hannover and Würzburg and became Research Junior Group Leader ‘Cardiac Wounding and Healing’ at the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (IZKF) of the Julius-Maximilians University, Würzburg (Germany) from 2006 to 2009. Since October 2009 he is a full professor in permanent position at the Hannover Medical School (MHH), and Director of the Institute of Molecular and Translational Therapeutic Strategies (IMTTS; http://www.mh-hannover.de/imtts.html). Since July 2013 he is also Visiting Professor at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK. Prof. Thum is Fellow of the American Heart Association, of the ESC, and of the HFA. Furthermore, he is member of the German Society of Cardiology (DGK), the German Society of Internal Medicine (DGIM), and member ‘at large’ of the World Section of the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR). Thomas is a substitute member of the Management Committee of the European COST Action CardioRNA (to represent Germany), and participates in the DFG-funded Cluster of Excellence REBIRTH (From REgenerative BIology to Reconstructive THerapies) in Hannover since 2006; he is elected spokesman of the initiative since December, 2018. Thomas Thum is also active at the Hannover Medical School as vice-chair of the PhD Program ‘Molecular Medicine’ of the Hannover Biomedical Research School, vice-chair on Internationalization, and member of the steering committee of the Hannover Unified Biobank (HUB). Thomas' main scientific interest is in the role of non-coding RNAs in cardiovascular biology and disease, mechanisms of development and treatment of heart failure (HF), and diverse aspects in translational cardiovascular medicine, including large animal and early clinical trial studies. Thus Thomas (co-) authors >300 publications in peer-reviewed journals (H-index 65; m-index 3.4) and received a large number of important public grants so far, including but not limited to a project within the DFG-funded Clinical Research Group (KFO) 311 ‘(Pre-) terminal heart and lung failure - mechanical unloading and repair’ at MHH, the MIRVAD grant of the Leducq foundation (Leducq Trans-Atlantic Network and Training Program on MicroRNA-Based Therapeutic Strategies in Vascular Disease, 2014–2019), for which he is the network coordinator, and an ERC Consolidator Grant to explore selected long non-coding RNAs as diagnostics and therapeutic targets for HF (LONGHEART, 2015–2020). His group is also successful in EU consortium projects such as FIBROTARGETS (2013–2017), HOMAGE (2013–2019), and CARDIOREGENIX (2019–2023). His work has contributed to many ground-breaking papers, a very few of which are listed below.1-8 Prof. Thum received a number of honourable awards such as the Hugo-Geiger Award of the Bavarian Ministry of Science, Germany (2001), the Parmley Award of the American College of Cardiology (2005), the Oskar-Lapp Award (2008), the Albert-Fraenkel Award (2010) and the Franz-Maximilian-Groedel Award (2012) of the German Cardiac Society, the Outstanding Achievement Award of the ESC (2011), and the Outstanding Investigator Award of the ISHR (2015), to mention a few. Based on his broad experience and expertise, Thomas Thum acts as a reviewer for the European Research Council (ERC) and for a number of national institutions in Germany, UK, France, Ireland, Austria, and the Netherlands, as well as Advisory Board Member or Member of a pool of experts, e.g. in the National Medical Research Council, Singapore (2014–2018), the Pasteur Institute, Lille, France (since 2016), the Aachen Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research (IZKF), University Aachen, Germany (since 2016), and the German National Committee for the Protection of Laboratory Animals, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (since 2018). He is Consulting Editor at Circulation Research, International Associate Editor at the European Heart Journal, and Editorial Board Member at Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology; Basic Research in Cardiology; the American Journal of Physiology – Heart and Circulatory Physiology, PLoS One, and Physiol Genomics. Last but not least, Thomas Thum is a successful entrepreneur and patent holder, with > 30 filed and partly granted patents (nine of them licensed), and founder of the clinical stage biotech company Cardior Pharmaceuticals GmbH (www.cardior.de). T: Current clinical practice is dominated by very common treatments of HF patients with some progress in HF with reduced ejection fraction and little progress in HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) so far. Fur sure we need a much better stratification of HF patients finally to design new therapeutic entry points, e.g. with respect to co-morbidities. For instance, HFpEF patients with cardiac dysfunction due to enhanced cardiac fibrosis9 may need different treatment approaches compared to HFpEF patients with diabetic10, 11 and/or kidney co-morbidities.12 Through emerging new technologies such as RNA and single-cell sequencing, we may be able in the future to identify new patient cohorts/subgroups that will benefit better from a treatment approach than others do. The great new HFA initiative, the ESC HFA Atlas in Europe, will also help here a lot in the future. Additionally, there will be much more preclinical research in HF models with co-morbidities. This may allow us to identify so far unknown targets and pathways either in heart tissue directly or somewhere else, whose targeting will lead to better efficacy of HF therapy. T: One of the big challenges I see is how to bring more new therapeutic molecules into clinical development. Currently, there is a big gap between basic science and finally testing new upcoming molecules/mechanisms in the clinic. There are many obvious reasons for this, such as lack of entrepreneurship and industry cooperation, limited knowledge and limited translational funding opportunities. For this we need to work hard to implement better strategies how Academia and Industry will efficiently join forces in the development of optimized therapeutic and diagnostic strategies. In addition we need more public/governmental support for translational development of targets into early clinical testing. This topic is one of the aims I will work on during my time being a member of the HFA Board. T: One important point would be to continue both the support of young clinicians and basic scientists. In addition, we need to further create an environment boosting joint research between clinicians, translational, basic scientists and the Industry. To invest in the young as well as in joint European research strategies will allow sustainability of our HFA and guarantee continuous success. T: It's a great field in dire need to find novel targets and approaches and thus a great area and opportunity for young clinicians/researchers. Depending on the career stage, different things should be taken into consideration. At an early stage I think it is important to find a group that either scientifically and/or clinically is very active and belongs to the best. It is also important that you try to publish in the best journals and seek for grant support as soon as possible; this may include travel grants in the beginning and more sophisticated project grants at a later stage. Currently, there are many great European funding opportunities also for PhD students to even work part-time in various different labs including that from Pharmaceutical Industry. Such a broad perspective will widen your horizon and prepare you to become a next-generation leader in HF and hopefully also in the HFA. T: There have been (fortunately) a number of different great mentors in my career. I had very personal memorable meetings with Prof. Philip Poole-Wilson, who was my mentor during my PhD thesis at the Imperial College in London. He really took his time to show me a lot of skills in scientific writing and thinking, which helped me a lot in my future career. As time is one of the scarce resources we as clinicians and scientists have, it's wonderful to spend some of that rare resource also to building the career of others. I adopted this strategy with great experiences and memories. Andrew J.S. Coats University of Warwick, UK and IRCCS San Raffaele Pisana, Rome, Italy email protected