Bridging the clinic and the laboratory: Dr Jonathan Sen’s vision for the next generation of cardiovascular research

For Brisbane-based Emerging Leaders Committee member, Dr Jonathan Sen, a Consultant Cardiologist with Premier Cardiology at The Wesley Hospital and Clinical Affiliate of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, the clinic and the laboratory are inseparable.

"Seeing patients shows me which questions we don't yet have good answers for. Research is how I try to answer them. Doing both means the research stays grounded in real problems, and the care I provide keeps improving because I'm helping to build the evidence behind it. For me it was never really a choice between the two," he says.

Cardiology was a natural fit for his analytical mind, a field where the heart is simultaneously mechanical, electrical and human, and where the questions are rarely straightforward. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne and the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, on myocardial phenotyping and precision medicine in aortic stenosis, concurrent with his clinical cardiology training. He then undertook a cardio-oncology fellowship at Toronto's University Health Network, embedded within the organ-specific oncology teams of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

His expertise now spans aortic stenosis and valvular heart disease, heart failure, advanced cardiac imaging and cardio-oncology, caring for the heart during cancer treatment.

Working across so many areas is a deliberate choice. "Patients don't arrive as a single diagnosis. Someone with a narrowed aortic valve may also be midway through chemotherapy, with a weakening heart muscle and a family history of coronary disease. The breadth is what lets me treat that as one person, not four separate problems."

Dr Sen’s current research harnesses artificial intelligence and multi-omics data to predict cardiovascular risk earlier, so problems can be treated before they become irreversible.

He has also invested heavily in the next generation of cardiologists, co-founding the Association of Queensland Advanced Trainees in Cardiology, helping establish the CSANZ Heart School, and serving as national trainee representative on the RACP cardiology training committee.

"I've seen how much further you get when good people are connected and pointed in the same direction," he says. "The Emerging Leaders Committee is that idea taken national."

Dr Sen joined the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance in 2019 as a member of the Clinical Trials Flagship Advisory Group. "That work showed me what an alliance can do that no single institution can. Joining the Emerging Leaders Committee was a chance to keep contributing while helping bring others through. I work across a lot of areas, and I'm looking forward to learning from people whose strengths are different from mine."

His ambitions for the committee are characteristically practical. "I'd love for a clinician, a basic scientist, a data scientist and a trialist to be able to find each other and work on the same problem. If we can help emerging researchers get the training and collaborators they need, take a chance on promising ideas, and get discoveries into clinics faster, then we'll have done our job."