Scientists on the spot: Costantino Iadecola

Highlight: In this Onlife interview, Dr Costantino Iadecola speaks about his remarkable achievements in the field of ischaemic brain injury, neurodegeneration, and cognitive impairment, and offers young scientists insightful career advice to help achieve similar success.

Summary of interview

Dr Costantino Iadecola, as a physician-scientist, first spoke about why he focused on neurobiology as a specialization. During his medical course (Sapienza University of Rome), he was obsessed in studying human physiology, discovering the brain as one of the most complex and fascinating aspects of biology. Then, he decided to pursue a clinical specialty in Neurology, beginning also a research career on cerebral vascular biology, at Weill Cornell Medicine—New York, which at the time was not was really pretty much in the domain of cardiologists.

Dr Iadecola considered difficult to choose the major milestone discovery in his scientific career, however, he highlighted his ground-breaking research on the involvement of neurovascular dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases. Indeed, as stated by him, his body of work has revealed that vascular factors may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of neurodegenerative dementias. Also, he highlighted his contributions for the role of innate immunity and the microbiome in ischaemic brain injury. Finally, his studies suggest that vascular and neurodegenerative changes are distinct, yet inextricably intertwined substrates of age-related cognitive impairment.

Next, Dr Iadecola discussed how he sees the evolution in this research path. He considered that a renewed interest in vascular causes of cognitive dysfunction has led to several advances. Collectively, all evidences suggest that vascular pathology is a likely pathogenic contributor to age-related dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, inextricably linked to disease onset and progression. Consequently, he thinks that the contribution of vascular factors should be considered in preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic approaches to address one of the major health challenges of our time.

Finally, he considered that, to really achieve a brilliant scientific career, young physician-scientists need to be persistent, honest, curious, hard-working, not easily discouraged, and passionate about science but eager to share and work with others. To him, a clinician-scientist has the best of both worlds: love for patient care and basic research.

Funding

R.A. is funded by the EC Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant (No. 847635), and acknowledges FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Technologia) under the auspices of the project RELAX-2-PAH (2022.08921.PTDC; DOI 10.54499/2022.08921.PTDC).

Authors

Biography: Rui is a biologist with a Ph.D. degree in Cardiovascular Sciences obtained in 2019 at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (Portugal) and, recently, he became a Marie Sklodowska Curie fellow under de UNA4CAREER programme, at the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, School of Medicine, Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Rui has a strong expertise in animal models of pulmonary arterial hypertension (e.g. monocrotaline and hypoxia–Sugen5416) and in in vivo and in vitro evaluation of cardiac function. Rui has also maintained relevant collaborations with institutions of excellence in cardiovascular research and therapeutic innovation, including INSERM (France), Medical University of Graz (Austria), Christchurch School of Medicine (New Zealand), and Antwerp University (Belgium). As an early career researcher, he has won numerous prestigious scholarships and awards such as a Janssen Innovation Award (2018) and European Respiratory Society Short-Term Fellowship Grant (2017). He was also a core member of the Scientists of Tomorrow Nucleus of the European Society of Cardiology (2020–23). His current research focuses on elucidating the role and therapeutic potential of novel small molecules (e.g. small peptides and microRNAs) in the setting of pulmonary arterial hypertension and associated heart failure.

Biography: Costantino Iadecola, M.D., is the Director and Chair of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute and the Anne Parrish Titzell Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. His research focuses on the basic mechanisms of neurovascular function and on the cellular and molecular alterations underlying ischaemic brain injury, neurodegeneration, and other conditions associated with cognitive impairment. A pioneer in establishing the concept of neurovascular unit, Dr Iadecola has championed the involvement of neurovascular dysfunction in neurodegenerative diseases, and the role of innate immunity and the microbiome in ischaemic brain injury. He has published over 400 papers in peer-reviewed journals and plays a leadership role in research organizations and funding agencies in the USA and abroad. He has been involved, as editor or editorial board member, in several journals including Circulation Research, Stroke, Hypertension, the Journal of Neuroscience, and the Annals of Neurology. Dr Iadecola has received the McHenry Award from the American Academy of Neurology, two Jacob Javits Awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Willis Award—the highest honour in stroke research bestowed by the American Heart Association (AHA), the Zenith Fellow Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, the Excellence Award in Hypertension Research (Novartis) from the Hypertension Council of the AHA, and the Chancellor’s Award in Neuroscience from Louisiana State University. In 2015, he was elected to the Association of American Physicians. In 2019, Dr Iadecola was elected Distinguished Scientist by the American Heart Association and in 2022 received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. Since 2018, Clarivate Analytics listed Dr Iadecola as one of world’s ‘Highly Cited Researchers’ for ranking in the top 1% of the most-cited authors in the field of neuroscience and behavioural sciences. Dr Iadecola’s career was featured in Nature Neuroscience in December 2023.

Author notes