As chief scientific officer at New York City-based Hospital for Special Surgery, Lionel B. Ivashkiv, MD, is tasked to balance discipline with ingenuity.
Dr. Ivashkiv joined Hospital for Special Surgery in 1992 and was named the Richard L. Menschel Chair and chief scientific officer in May 2015. He also serves as attending physician at HSS and professor of medicine and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College. As CSO, Dr. Ivashkiv will work to improve HSS' leadership in the field of musculoskeletal and autoimmune disease research.
Hospital for Special Surgery is a national leader in orthopedics, rheumatology and scientific research. It's a member of NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System and an affiliate of Weill Cornell Medical College. In its 2015-16 rankings, U.S. News & World Report ranked the hospital No. 1 in orthopedics, No. 3 in rheumatology and No. 7 in geriatrics. Hospital for Special Surgery made the Becker's list of "100 Great Hospitals in America" in 2015.
Here Dr. Ivashkiv discusses innovative scientific thinking, precision medicine and how his reading led to an interest in genomics research.
Question: What is one idea that should be used more in healthcare research and why?
Lionel Ivashkiv, MD: We need to focus on integrating characterization of detailed clinical phenotypes with the results of complex cellular, molecular and genomic testing of patients.
We should be spending more thought on how to convert data into knowledge and thinking about how that knowledge can be used to improve the care of patients. There is lots of emphasis now on data gathering and registries, but it's challenging to develop bioinformatic approaches to understand this data to create knowledge that can be used to treat diseases and help patients.
Q: How do you foster creative or innovative thinking as chief scientific officer?
One of the things that has fostered the most creativity in our research is to bring together clinicians and clinical investigators with basic scientists. It's one of the more unique aspects of our culture. We are building multidisciplinary research teams. We bring together clinical investigators who know the important clinical problems and basic scientists who are familiar with advanced technologies and recent scientific breakthroughs. There is cross-fertilization so the scientists can learn about clinical problems, and the clinicians get exposed to a whole new world of scientific knowledge. Many new ideas and new ways of approaching problems come out of the process.
We have one research group working on rheumatoid arthritis. This multidisciplinary research team is comprised of clinical investigators, bench scientists, experts in advanced imaging technologies, and surgeons and rheumatologists. We're trying to discover new molecular pathways that cause disease, which can lead to new therapies.
Q: Why is it important to continue research efforts in healthcare?
We're at the beginning of a new era. With breakthroughs in technology, we can use sequencing and epigenetic approaches to characterize patients in detail.
One of the terms used for this is precision medicine. We can now study patients' cells and molecules in exquisite detail. Before, you could look at 10 molecules at once, but now you can look at tens of thousands. It's a way to understand each individual patient and match them with the best treatments.
One great challenge at HSS is to apply precision medicine approaches to musculoskeletal and orthopedic problems. There's untapped potential in precision medicine, and it's essential to move forward.
Q: What was the last book you read that contributed to your research efforts?
In terms of science, maybe we should read more scientific books, but instead we mostly read scientific journals that report the primary literature. I probably spend 20 hours per week reading primary literature, which includes data and results. But I also read reviews and articles discussing things I don't know about, which helps me think about new research approaches and directions.
I became interested in genomics research for the first time about four years ago. I did so by reading reviews and literature I hadn't read before. To pursue my interest in the topic, we founded the David Z. Rosenzwieg Center for Genomics Research to bring the power of genomic research to our patients.