Investigators from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and other academic and research institutions celebrated the 100-year anniversary of The Journal of Clinical Investigation during a day-long symposium in the Hughes Auditorium on October 18.
The event celebrated a century of publishing scientific discoveries for the preeminent journal, which promotes research aimed at defining disease mechanisms across a range of medical specialties.
In 2021, Feinberg was selected to serve as the home of JCI for the journal’s next five-year term. Elizabeth McNally, MD, PhD, the Elizabeth J. Ward Professor of Genetic Medicine and director of the Center for Genetic Medicine, was elected and currently serves as the journal’s editor-in-chief and is the first woman to hold the title of editor-in-chief in JCI’s 100-year history.
“Today we’re celebrating one hundred years of The Journal of Clinical Investigation and I’m so delighted that all of you could be here today and a special thanks to all our invited speakers. Over the many years of JCI, the range of investigation that was published often proceeded and predicted many of the advances in human medicine today,” said McNally, who is also a professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, welcoming attendees to the celebratory event.
Throughout the day, investigators from Feinberg and beyond presented their research and translational applications, including Leslie Leinwand, PhD, the Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology Distinguished Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Professor and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
During her presentation, Leinwald discussed her work investigating the genetics and the molecular physiology of inherited heart diseases, specifically hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which manifests as the heart muscle becomes thickened, or hypertrophied, and how mutations in cardiac myosin – proteins that help the heart muscle contract – cause HCM, the most common cause of sudden death in young people.
In a recent publication, Leinwald’s team discovered that the myosin inhibitor drug mavacamten, which binds to the myosin motor that powers heart muscle contraction, was effective in treating clinical obstructive HCM. Leinwald is also the cofounder of MyoKardia, Inc. which develops therapeutics for inherited cardiomyopathies, including mavacamten (sold as Camzyos).
“This same inhibitor may also be effective in skeletal myopathies that exhibit the same mechanism of pathogenesis, and sarcomere homeostasis may be an important mechanism in disease pathogenesis,” Leinwald said.
Benjamin Singer, ’07 MD, ’10 GME, the Lawrence Hicks Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, also discussed his work in identifying immunological mechanisms of lung injury and recovery from severe pneumonia to promote the resolution of acute lung inflammation and lung damage repair.
In collaboration with colleagues at Feinberg’s Successful Clinical Response In Pneumonia Therapy (SCRIPT) Systems Biology Center, Singer found that patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia stayed longer on a ventilator and in the ICU than patients with other types of viral pneumonia, but that both patient groups had similar mortality rates.
“The idea here is that there might be intrinsically low mortality associated with the viral pneumonia of SARS-CoV-2, but it’s offset by that long length of stay in the dry susceptibility to ICU complications like unresolving secondary pneumonia. So now we have a framework what are the cellular mechanisms that might be explaining these clinical realities,” Singer said.
Concluding the symposium was a presentation from W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, director of the National Cancer Institute, who spoke about JCI and its impact on the past century of biomedical research.
“I think that one of the things that JCI has given me in my career and many others is the opportunity to create some of that front matter and to synthesize and think about the kind of work that we do to put out ideas in ways that people really read and appreciate,” Rathmell said.
Rathmell also described the next era of biomedical research as a “360” era, one that involves cross-sector collaborations, ‘bottom-up’ research and engages every person, from scientists to research participants and communities, in the research process.
“The new era is marked by engagement of research participants as partners and an optimized and representative workforce, and we are ready,” Rathmell said.
Following the symposium was a Q&A panel with the selected presenters and a celebratory dinner and reception.
JCI is a premier venue for discoveries in basic and clinical biomedical science that will advance the practice of medicine. On October 1, 1924, The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) published the first issue of JCI, and is published by the ASCI, a nonprofit honor organization of physician-scientists established in 1908.
