Cardiovascular Innovation Institute | Medical Research Video Production Louisville

Growing new body parts. Artificial hearts. Heart valve procedures performed in utero, when the heart is a millimeter across. Produced for the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute, this film introduces a Louisville research environment where multidisciplinary teams develop regenerative medicine technologies to improve outcomes for children and adults with heart disease.

Translating cutting-edge science for a general audience is its own production discipline. We paired researcher interviews with laboratory visuals to make extraordinary work understandable — and to make the case that Louisville is on the leading edge of something critically important to the health of every citizen of this world, in the institute's own words.

About This Project
Client: Cardiovascular Innovation Institute
Type: Medical Research Institution Film
Location: Louisville, KY
Services: Scientific storytelling, researcher interviews, laboratory videography, editing

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Video Transcript:

You have to see it to believe it. It is truly extraordinary. Some of the most exciting things going on in cardiovascular rejuvenation are going on right here in this building, right now.

I think what a lot of people don't really know is that in Louisville, we had probably one of the very largest cardiovascular surgery programs in the world, and what we really wanted to do was to complement that with the research. So the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute is a very unique research environment, where we have multidisciplinary teams that develop technologies to improve the outcomes of children and adults with heart disease.

We are a regenerative medicine institute, and regenerative medicine involves a variety of different things — developing new materials that, once placed in the body, the body will accept. That's critical for a variety of devices: new heart valves, new stents, new patches that can go on the heart. We develop and work on a variety of very technically significant devices, known as the total artificial heart and, especially now, left ventricular assist devices. These are mechanical devices that assist a heart that has become so damaged and weak that it's not pumping the appropriate amount of blood.

What we're trying to do is regenerate the heart muscle. An example would be somebody who has a heart attack — when the heart attacks, that heart muscle actually dies. So we're trying to develop new cell-based therapies so the heart will regenerate and be able to rebuild itself. We can take a piece of human tissue, bring it into the facility, and actually grow new body parts, especially cardiovascular devices. One of the very important things is that our laboratory here is run under what's called good laboratory practices, as well as good manufacturing practices, to develop these new therapies.

Some of our solutions are specific to cardiovascular. Many of them are not — they're broadly applicable. We're talking with people related to joint repair, bone injury, CNS, kidney. We are involved with imaging and advanced imaging technologies. Some of this work is now being used extensively in pediatric research, where surgery can take place in utero, inside the mother. At that time, the heart's about a millimeter in diameter. So we've developed imaging methods and ways to instrument the heart, and in fact you can then use a catheter and a balloon to open a heart valve in the middle of pregnancy, before the child's delivered. There are a number of therapies right now that can help these kids live. I want to see these kids thrive, not just live.

This particular enterprise creates the opportunity for Louisville and for Kentucky to step out on the cutting edge of something that is very exciting. We are in an active phase of hiring new investigators and support staff from a wide variety of states, but also utilizing the highly skilled group of individuals that live in Louisville. It's a great collection of scientists that have come from all over the country. Never do we have the same day twice. And at the end of the day, when we have a big day, we realize we're moving closer to helping a ton of people. It's a blast to do work in cardiovascular research.

I think what we've accomplished in two years is just really staggering. But what's more exciting is what the vision is for the future. This is critically important to the health and welfare of every citizen of this world.