NEWS.am Medicine presents an interview with Roger Hajjar, director of the Mass General Brigham's Gene and Cell Therapy Program, held within the framework of the 6th International Medical Congress of Armenia.

Mr. Hajjar, at the 6th International Medical Congress of Armenia you had an interesting speech about cell therapy, gene therapy in cardiology. What was your speech about? Can you share it with your audience?

My talk was on gene and cell therapy for a very important disease, which is called heart failure. This is when the heart enlarges and becomes weak. Many patients, especially when they grow older, are developing this problem, and the treatments we have now, even though they prolong life a little bit, they don’t seem to be modifying the disease itself. Gene therapy and introducing genes to the heart or introducing new cells to the heart may be the answer to rejuvenate these failing hearts and bring them back to a normal state.

How do we introduce these cells and genes to the heart?

The genes are introduced using vectors. Some viruses can be deactivated and the genes can be put in. Then you bring those vectors into the blood and they go to the heart. There they basically make the protein that is helping the heart beat better and function better. For cell therapy, we make the cells outside the heart and bring them in to basically couple with the heart itself. So you bring in new cells that function better, it’s like bringing in a new engine and by doing so the heart function improves.

At what level is this new technology now? How do we use it today?

Gene therapy is advancing very quickly and there are now gene therapies for other diseases such as hemophilia, sickle cell disease, AIP diseases. It’s coming to the heart and that should be available by 2023, we will have multiple gene therapies for heart problems. In terms of cell therapy that takes a little bit longer but again, it’s coming down, in the next 10 years or so we will be able to take off the shelf some cells and repair the heart by doing that.

What do you think this technology will be like in 20 years?

For gene therapy in five-six years, it will be available to patients. It has been tested experimentally now; they are in advanced stages of testing. For cell therapy, it may take another 10 years but it’s definitely coming down the line. Different countries with different technologies will be able to utilize this.

How efficient will they be in 10 years?

In 10 years, we predict that heart failure, for example, will continue to grow because the population is aging. And as you age, you get more heart failures. So we need novel types of therapy to treat a large number of patients who are going to develop this disease. And right now what we are seeing is very good efficiency but we need to make sure that it’s sustained over the next 10 to 20 years.  What was the main message you wanted to introduce during your speech?  The main message was that cardiac diseases are very prevalent all over the world. We have some treatments pharmacologically but they don’t seem to be enough to halt the disease. What we need is revolutionary types of treatment like gene therapy, cell therapy to reverse these diseases. This was the message that to rejuvenate the heart we need these types of therapies.

Why is it important to discuss medical approaches of the future during such congresses?

There are drugs and therapies that are available that some patients don’t have access to yet. The first thing we need to do as doctors is to make sure that whatever is available to the patient goes to the patient. What we are trying to say here is that we want the doctors of Armenia to also look at the future, because there is a future with new therapies and they need to know this because it’s coming and they need to be prepared to deploy the same type of treatments to their patients.

When in your opinion will we be able to use these technologies here in Armenia?

Armenia is very sophisticated in terms of its medical treatments. It has very good doctors who are very knowledgeable in what they do. So I think once it’s available in the Western world, it’s going to be applied within a few years in Armenia. So, I think these therapies are coming to Armenia in the next 10 years.