Professor Sian Harding has taken on the role of Interim Head of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) at Imperial College London.

Sian takes over the reins from Professor Kim Fox who chose to stand down from the role in January. Sian is the Head of the BHF Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Centre, Institute Lead for Women for Athena SWAN with NHLI, and the Cardiovascular theme lead for the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. She obtained her PhD in Pharmacology from King's College, London, and since then the primary focus of her work has been cardiomyocyte function in the failing heart.  

I sat down with Sian after she took on this new role to find out more about Sian and her research, along with her thoughts on taking up the mantle for NHLI.

What excites you most about taking on the role of Head of NHLI?

"It is a time when people want to get behind our work and invest in us, so there are lots of opportunities on the horizon" Professor Sian Harding

What has been so exciting is talking to everyone across the Department about their research. NHLI is such a fertile ground for science innovation and there is so much going on. Our people are collaborating with researchers all over the world, both large and small projects are undertaking exciting and imaginative work. We need the framework in place to support this going forward but it will be driven by our great passion for outstanding work that is already embedded in NHLI. Of course, all my meetings are now much longer as I get distracted by the amazing work people are sharing with me!

We also have lots of collaborations going on across College. I was already aware on the cardiac side of all the physical sciences we work with, such as aeronautics, material science, data science, photonics, and Chemistry with imaging and drug design – and I am learning that there is a comparable interaction in respiratory for each of these areas. I don’t have to tell people to go collaborate as they already are! I am excited for Hammersmith campus that we will have more of our collaborators closer to hand soon with the completion of the White City campus. 

The great thing about taking over now is that we’ve just had a review validate the science of NHLI and say that most of it is internationally important. It is a time when people want to get behind our work and invest in us, so there are lots of opportunities on the horizon.

Why did you become a scientist?

I think I always was a scientist, it was just natural for me. When I was nine years old the dinner lady at school asked me what I wanted to do when I was older and I replied ‘cut up dead bodies’ – not knowing exactly what I meant at the time, but I already had a deep curiosity for biology and science. I wanted to understand how the body works.

What is your research about?

My research is centred on the cardiomyocyte (heart muscle cell) and its role in heart failure. Starting with simply understanding what happens in heart failure and the effects on myocardial function, developing models and systems around that. I was amongst the first to do work on isolated human cardiomyocytes. Our understanding from this work lead to involvement in the SERCA gene therapy trial and more recently using pluripotent stem cells to produce genotype-specific cardiomyocytes. This allows the possibility of gene editing and creating engineered heart tissue, this can be a really powerful tool for looking at larger scale characteristics like arrhythmia.

We want to use gene therapy to improve the function of the remaining cardiomyocytes in the heart after heart failure. We are working to stimulate these cells to be as contractile as possible, aiming to make the most of the muscle you have left after heart failure. The BHF Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine Centre is taking this one step further, making engineered heart tissue and pluripotent stem cells cardiomyocytes, to actually replace the damaged muscle and return the heart to the state it was in before the damage occurred.

What is the next big challenge in your research?

The ability to introduce these cells into the heart. We can produce large sheets of beating muscle but we need to be able to put them into the heart safely. It needs to integrate fully and not get destroyed by the immune system, plus the physical characteristics of the heart make it tricky to keep cells there. We are investigating biomaterials to improve cell retention and allow new cells to join up with the heart, and also prevent the disturbances in rhythm which we know are likely to happen. The new younger, stronger cells beat spontaneously, and introduce a new pacemaker into the heart which can be dangerous. There is obviously no room for error working with the heart! 

What do you see as the upcoming priorities for NHLI in 2018 and beyond?

I think we need to look past the specifics of cardiac and respiratory science into the larger scientific landscape of what is possible when we combine a number of research areas. For example, in chronic disease there are huge parallels and comorbidities across many areas of study, not just cardiac and respiratory.  We see things in common in terms of the how the body reacts and the triggers for the disease, for example in dementia and renal disease. That is where the clinical need and scientific interest is – we learn more by comparing across fields of interest than we do by keeping them siloed. We need to not think of cardiology and respiratory as two separate areas but rather look at the underlying mechanisms involved in disease and what we can learn through a combined approach. 

What is the importance of having a female lead in 2018?

It just shows it is possible to have a female lead and that there is no reason not to have one, statistically there should have been more. Across universities the number of female leads has actually started to decline recently. So, it’s not about an individual involved being significant, it’s about waiting for the statistics to show parity – then it will be significant. 

What is the importance of education within NHLI and Imperial?

We’re a university, that’s what we do! It’s just a given – and it also enlivens and seeds a lot of the research we do. There is considerable interplay between our teaching and research; people come to learn here because of the research excellence, we teach them and they go on to further our research and teach the next generation. Also, a lot of our Centres have education and public outreach briefs, and this needs to be embedded in all future Centres and Networks at point of conception to ensure education is an integral part of our research. 

There are some unknowns coming down the road with various government HE initiatives. I am interested in high level apprenticeships and what we can do with those, especially for example in advanced therapies where there is a need for more skilled people. We are in a strong position to train people about the delivery of advanced therapies, from the lab right through to the clinic, in fact many of our Masters programmes are bridging that gap already.

Can you tell me something people wouldn’t know about you?

My first job was as a ‘hand model’ for my father who was a photographer. Both my parents were artists, my father went to Guilford Art School and my mother to St. Martin’s. Which is interesting considering I have gone on to look at imaging of the heart, we are all united by our desire to capture great images!