Dr. Gary Gibbons, Director, NHLBI:  Another aspect I enjoyed about your work as a clinician scientist, is how you conducted your research. You said ping ponging between literally mice and human lab bench and the clinical setting. Can you talk about those two complementary contexts and particularly what lessons learned or implication may have for young investigators, the next generation?
Dr. Stan Hazen, Cleveland Clinic:  Well, I think that an important feature of what is done is to focus on what's happening in the human. We've kind of solved diseases many, many times in the mice just to see that they don't happen in the human. So, what I often will do in our research is sometimes we will start with human studies to see if we can find an association. And it becomes a hypothesis-generating exercise. And some people might even call it a fishing expedition. But then, once you find that, then the question becomes okay, how can you take it and then look at it in a mechanistic way and delve into and see if it's actually making – is it just an association or mechanistically linked. And so we often will try to work on projects that begin or have a component of human studies initially, but that also have something that we can then go into the animal model and the genetics of to try to show causation and really work out the details at a more molecular level. 
So that's how we keep bouncing back and forth. And then based on what we see in the mouse models many times, or the animal, then that guides us in saying oh, this is a new thing to try to look at in the human studies. And actually that happens all the time. And I think that's also part of what makes the significance of what we're working on more likely to be able to lead to a clinical benefit for our society. I mean, that's why we have a great job. We have so much freedom to pursue whatever we want to as part of our research. But we're really, we're paid by the taxpayers. And we feel like, I feel like we want to give something back, and improve. And I don't know about you, but I really want to cure somebody of something in my lifetime, if we can. And this is – the only way to do it is to get into humans. So I think it's an important component, whether you're a physician, or even if you're not a physician, a PhD. You can collaborate with physicians to get access to human material for doing mechanistic and meaningful studies. 
Dr. Gibbons:  Well that’s terrific, Stan. I wanted also to get a sense of, from a standpoint of being an NIH-funded investigator, what you thought some of the most compelling challenges and questions, in a broader sort of sphere, are intriguing you at this point, beyond the particular research projects you're working on. What do you think are some of the most exciting, new areas for science?
Dr. Hazen:  Well, I have a, call it myopic view. I look and say what are the number one killers in the United States? And heart disease is still the number one cause of mortality in the United States and western industrial societies. And with all of the therapies that we have, and even with all the lifestyle changes we have, still 50% or more of the events still keep on coming through. So we need more understanding of new and novel pathways so that we have new targets to go after to intervene. And so, again, this is my own personal interest, but I think one of the more exciting aspects is part of what we're working on, is the concept that there are many, many new targets now for cardiovascular disease that have recently come out, whether they be for these large genome-wide association studies. That's just the beginning. We now know that there's a thread there to go after, that there's a genetic link in that pathway with these validated genetic variance that are tracking with cardiac risk. Each one of those represents a whole pathway to go after for trying to dissect and say, can we show how this is mechanistically linked to heart disease? And are there therapeutic opportunities for intervening in these? And that's including areas that maybe aren't coming out of the genome-wide association studies. Studies like our own work didn't come out of that. But it opens up whole new vistas or opportunities for a potential for therapeutic interventions.
I find that is some of the most exciting aspects of what's going on. But that's just because I'm looking at it from the lens of what's going on in cardiovascular disease, so…
Dr. Gibbons:  Well, that's terrific. I appreciate your time. I know it's pressing. So, just in going out, I want to, to express my gratitude for you for sharing your comments on the science. And I really enjoyed talking to you today and, again, want to congratulate you on a very interesting, provocative study. I think the data are very exciting, have a lot of implications moving forward, and we're anticipating substantial impact on the field in advancing it in ways that will help patients and fulfill the mission of the NHLBI. So I really appreciate you taking the time to convey that in ways that the public can understand and further disseminate it to our investigative community.
Dr. Hazen:  Thank you very much.
Dr. Gibbons and Dr. Hazen Transcript
Segment 5