The Heart of Innovation and Discovery

On Nov. 4, 2025, The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital hosted Leading Edge Medicine, which featured a panel of WashU Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital cardiovascular experts, Drs. Gregory A. Ewald, Tsuyoshi Kaneko, and Nishath Quader, who discussed the future of cardiovascular care and the innovations that brought us where we are today. Leading Edge Medicine is a unique educational opportunity to hear directly from research scientists, physicians, nurses, and others on the latest innovations happening at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital has a history of excellence for cardiovascular care, developing innovative procedures that have become the standard of care across the country and around the world. Moderator Blake Exline, executive director of operations at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, set the stage for the evening by highlighting some of the most transformative milestones and many firsts in the field of heart and vascular care that began at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and were driven by philanthropy. (View major heart and vascular care milestones over the years.)

Centered Around Collaboration

Collaboration was a major topic of conversation at Leading Edge Medicine and is the force behind much of the innovation taking place at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

“One of the things we’ve noted as key is multidisciplinary heart teams,” Dr. Quader says. “We get together once or twice a week and discuss the patients we’ve seen in clinics. It’s not just one physician’s input. We all have an input in the patients’ care, and I think that helps us deliver better patient care. I think it is phenomenal for patient care.”

Panelists say that collaboration across disciplines will be further strengthened with Plaza West Tower, which opened in October 2025 and consolidates many heart and vascular care teams into a central location. It was also designed to center patient and family needs, making their stays more comfortable and productive. (Learn more about the Plaza West Tower.)

Many of the patient beds at the Plaza West Tower will support patients who receive care through the heart transplant program at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, which is now in its 40th year and has performed almost 1,200 heart transplants in that time.

“These patients don’t measure time in number of years since transplant,” Dr. Ewald says. “They measure it in, ‘I got married. I had children. I saw my children grow up.’ It really is the gift of life, and we are one of very few places around the world that can deliver that.”

Leading Edge Technology and Innovation

While the highly celebrated transplant program is growing, so is the heart program at large. In the past three years, the number of patients seeking expert heart care at Barnes-Jewish Hospital has increased by 35%. One of the reasons for this increase is that the Leading Edge Medicine panelists and their colleagues spend a lot of their time pursuing technology and medical interventions that will continue to improve outcomes for patients with heart diseases.

For example, during Leading Edge Medicine, Dr. Ewald showed attendees a photo of a device that allows surgeons to connect a donor heart to a blood supply for up to 12 hours before transplantation takes place, thus, expanding the donor pool and increasing opportunities for heart transplant patients. He says other options, like genetically modified hearts, are at the infancy of being developed but could also radically transform the field. Drugs that prevent transplant rejection are also underway. And even artificial intelligence is influencing the patient care model with potential for even more integration.

Philanthropic gifts through the Foundation play an important role in moving these innovations from a hope to a reality—and often, it can be done much faster thanks to private support.“One of the ways the Foundation has been so effective has been providing dollars to what we call translational research, to translate some of the findings that are going on in the labs and bring those out to patients,” Dr. Ewald says. “We rely heavily on private industry and drug companies themselves, and the Foundation to really take these things and make them useable in delivering the care that we deliver now.”

An example of this type of investment is a 2022 grant from the Foundation that helped Dr. Kaneko establish a robotic cardiac surgery program at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

“Robotic surgery is something that is really innovative in the surgical field, not just in the transcatheter side,” Dr. Kaneko says. “It was my vision to bring that to Barnes. What the Foundation allowed me to do was to support creating the program. I cannot thank the Foundation enough.”

Dr. Kaneko says the Foundation’s support enabled him to bring a team to Morgan Town, West Virginia, for training in robotic surgery. The team has now performed 50 robotic surgeries since 2022.

Dr. Ewald also acknowledged another Foundation-supported idea that became an international success, calling it “a change in the paradigm” of how patients with cardiac arrhythmias can be treated. The idea, to deliver targeted radiation therapy to treat arrhythmias, was the topic of a 2018 Leading Edge Medicine featuring Barnes-Jewish Hospital physicians Phillip Cuculich, MD, a WashU Medicine cardiologist, and Clifford Robinson, MD, a WashU Medicine radiation oncologist.

While many people are living longer thanks to the rapid advancement of better heart care and treatments, heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States for both men and women. Dr. Quader says local and national efforts to eliminate health disparities of heart disease, focused on education and access to technology, are critical. The rapid advancement of new treatment options gives Dr. Quader hope.

“I am amazed at how many new devices are on the market every few years,” Dr. Quader says. “I really want to offer our patients the best valve treatments possible. Patients come to me, and sometimes they might not be eligible for something now, but I always tell them, ‘Hey, there might be something for you in the next couple of years.”

Philanthropy plays an important role in powering discoveries and innovations as well as training heart and vascular caregivers. The more that can be learned about the causes and different ways to treat heart disease, the more we can improve patient outcomes.