Brian C. Jensen, associate professor of medicine and pharmacology in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology, speaks about his research on kinase inhibitor cardiotoxicity.
On any given Tuesday, you will find Brian C. Jensen, MD, cardiologist and physician-scientist, tending to patients in his cardio-oncology clinic. His schedule is packed to the brim with cancer patients. But not patients with heart cancer.
The largest number of patients he sees are cancer patients who have developed, or are at risk of developing, heart damage in response to their chemotherapy regimens. This type of heart damage, called cardiotoxicity, is a major cause of drug failure along different stages of drug development.
Jensen, who came to the UNC School of Medicine in 2009, started the clinic in 2015 to help patients in a challenging situation.
“I started the cardio-oncology clinic because I recognized that patients who experience cardiovascular issues while receiving cancer treatment face a very challenging situation and I wanted to help them,” said Jensen, who is an associate professor of medicine and pharmacology in the Department of Medicine’s Division of Cardiology. “My investigative focus on cardio-oncology arose from a clinical observation, when I took care of a patient who had developed cardiotoxicity after being treated with a kinase inhibitor that I had been studying in my lab for years as part of another project.”
Kinases are proteins that aid in the transfer of a certain molecular group – called phosphates – to other proteins to alter their activity, stabilize them, or mark them for destruction. Many of these molecules control critical cellular process throughout our body such as cellular division, cellular signaling, and mediating numerous important functions in the heart.