This award, created in 1970, goes to young investigators working in clinical or basic-science cardiovascular research. The investigator must be either a research trainee or researcher in his or her first independent university or hospital appointment at the time of submission.

Dr. Jack CJ Sun

Improving on Aspirin™ for CABG Patients

Coming from a background in clinical epidemiology from McMaster University where clinical trials have been elevated into an art form, Dr. Jack Sun, Transcatheter Cardiovascular Surgery Fellow at the Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, couldn't help but develop an interest.

"My favourite are randomized trials," he says. "They represent the highest-quality methodology to answer clinical questions."

Sun has just completed a pilot randomized trial of 100 post-CABG surgery patients to find a drug that can complement Aspirin™ to prevent post-CABG clotting or thrombosis while also preventing deep vein thrombosis. Fondaparinux and Heparin are the leading candidates.

Like Aspirin™, Fondaparinux is an antithrombotic—with the added benefit over Heparin that it does not cause Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia, an uncommon but potentially deadly condition. Fondaparinux is known to improve survival in heart-attack patients, providing another good reason to try it in CABG patients.

The idea is to reduce the 10-15 percent of grafts that fail within 30 days. Although a failed graft is not always fatal, it does increase the likelihood of heart attack and death. The added danger is that grafts can fail "silently," with symptoms so subtle they pass unnoticed until a serious problem appears.

"Although rates of occlusion were still fairly high in the trial, we found that Fondaparinux is probably safe and that we had almost complete follow-up for CT scans at 30 days," says Sun. "Patient follow-up in clinical trials is often one of our biggest challenges."

Sun will use the data to perform a larger trial in 2010.