A ‘Crazy Idea’ to Cure Heart Disease

It all began with a crazy idea.

“I remember that day when I cut a slice out of the heart and did some staining. I identified some reprogramming cell and that was on Christmas Eve and there was no one there. I was looking around for someone because I thought, ‘Oh my God, maybe something is real.’”

That night, Li Qian made her first big step towards curing heart disease. Now, the UNC researcher, mother of two and lab mentor has won the first ever award for stem cell and regenerative medicine. The Boyalife, Science and Science Translational Medicine Award is for researchers younger than 45 years old who are making critical advances in the fields of science and medicine.

“I started to get involved in some sort of cardiovascular research when I was an undergrad student,” Qian said. “Later on, when I went on for my post-doc training, my goal was to cure heart disease.”

While Qian estimates curing the disease is still a decade away, she said her ‘crazy ideas’ are actually working, and moving researchers one step closer to finding that cure. Her work proved it is possible to reprogram cardiac fibroblasts – the cells of scar tissue – to become functional cardio-myocytes – the healthy muscle tissue that helps the heart to beat.

“Maybe some crazy ideas are true. Maybe we can make that happen. So that’s very rewarding to all the hard work and all the frustration and all the failures.”

This research began in 2009, followed by the opening of Qian’s own lab in 2012. That same year, The American Heart Association ranked her research number two on the list of top ten advances in heart disease and stroke research. Qian’s breakthrough is the beginning of what she hopes will be regenerative treatments that can be tailored to individual patients.

“I think stem cell and regenerative medicine can really lead to something we never expected before – some new therapeutic strategy to help human patients.”

Qian is an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She says her years of experience in the labs have given her the strength to move beyond her failures and the wisdom to mentor UNC students.

“I always tell them, probably 90 percent of the time, the experiment will fail. But one out of 10 times, you’ll see some result coming out of the experiment and it’s something you’ve never seen. And that’s the tremendous excitement that you won’t find anywhere else.”

It’s that excitement that Qian says keeps her passion alive.

“I think I can feel excitement from every single small, but to us major, findings. I can get inspiration from all of those and still keep the passion.”

Qian went to San Francisco in June to accept her award and present her essay for Science magazine. She says the recognition gives her reassurance.

“This kind of brave testing, bold ideas gets rewarded by such a prestigious prize. And getting recognized can reassure us.”

Qian has a special word she uses to describe her research.

“We want to convert a scar into a heart muscle. It’s almost like magic.”

One day that magic, Qian says, just may cure Heart Disease.