 Today on The Heartbeat, we introduce you to world-renowned physician scientist Dr. Emerson Perrin, a graduate of THI's prestigious Interventional Cardiology Fellowship Program, who today serves as the medical director of the Texas Heart Institute. We sat down with Dr. Perrin to learn more about how a Brazilian-born violin major chose to become a doctor, later earning a PhD and going on to become a world-recognized leader in the development of stem cell therapies for cardiovascular diseases. Hello, Dr. Perrin. Thank you so much for being here with us today. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. So tell me about the current initiatives aimed to advance patient care at THI. Well, that's very interesting that you asked that because most people have the perception that THI, given its world leadership in historically with Dr. Cooley and all the surgeons and the transplant programs and everything that's happened here over the years, is a medical entity and it actually used to be. But back in 1967, Dr. Cooley gave the clinical charter of Texas Heart Institute to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital. And only recently, we've taken it back and or, you know, re-initiated THI as a clinical organization. And so now, in addition to research and education, which we've done and are very well known for, we now have the Texas Heart Institute as a clinical entity. And as part of that clinical entity, the Texas Heart Medical Group then has physicians that are Texas Heart physicians. For two decades, Dr. Perrin and his teams have explored the regenerative properties of stem cells to improve treatment options and even reverse the effects of disease or damage to the heart. Twenty years later, the first approved treatments for some of the most devastating heart conditions could be just around the corner. So for the last 20 plus years, you know, you have been an integral part in stem cell development and really using stem cells to advance cardiovascular health and care. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, well, yes, we have been working on this for a long time, pretty much day one since we treated the first patient with stem cells in their own heart back in 2001. So it's been quite a journey. The potential for stem cells in medicine is intuitive. It's obvious. But the real trick here is how do we do it? And that is tricky because these processes think, you know, when we think about treating people with medications, you know, medications are little chemical formulas and even doing that is complicated. You go through a long process to get new medications approved. Well, think about a biological, you know, living entity which is a cell and all the interactions that that cell has when you put it in a tissue and what and the effects that it's going to have. So it's taken us decades literally and will take us even more to understand what some of these things are, how they interact and how can we take advantage of this sort of incredible potential that we all have within us. Let's talk about quality of life for your patients. I mean, you've got patients that because of these advances that you are an integral part of, you know, they're able to do things that they weren't able to do before. They're able to live their lives more normally by, you know, snow skiing and going to Disney World and, you know, walking on the beach and doing all of these active things. So tell me how that feels to know that you are part of giving people their lives back. What we're doing really is substituting, creating some new heart muscle, improving that pumping function, the hearts of pump. And if we can make it pump better, well, if your heart now that wasn't pumping well is really circulating the blood and the oxygen and everything you need through your body in an effective way like it used to when you were a kid, well, you feel like you can do all kinds of things. So we have really seen some very impressive and very exciting things happen as people sort of regain their lives back after some of these successful stem cell treatments. I'm me. Thank you, Dr. Perlin. Thank you to your team because this has been a miracle. I'm very grateful and this is evidence of the success of the research project that you and your team are taking forward. You're a doctor. However, there are some things that people don't know about you that I think everybody should know about you. And that is that you build amplifiers and you race cars. So tell me about that. I enjoy motorsports and we're lucky here in Houston to have Coda, which is a, you know, international Formula 1 track, you know, very close by. So it's fantastic to be able to enjoy that and actually having motorsports is a very technical thing. It really is about executing certain things as many people might know. And the other thing I really enjoy doing is dealing with electronics and the vacuum tube is an incredible thing and it was in the 60s and 70s it was sort of substituted in a way by transistors which are solid state and small and miniaturized and very reliable. But in reproduction of music and certain other things like guitar amplifiers and and even just listening to music systems at home the vacuum tube and electronics just sounds so much better. So I love dealing with that and building these things for enjoyment. Favorite musician? Pat Matheny. Favorite car to drive? My own. Anything else you'd like to add that we haven't touched on? No, just stay tuned. I mean there's a lot of exciting things happening at the Hart Institute and you know we are really standing on the shoulder of giants and we just want to take the mission of the Hart Institute further and and and take it where it really deserves to be. That sounds awesome. Thank you so much Dr. Parran. Thank you for being here. You're very welcome. Thank you. For the Hart Beat, I'm Maya Pomeroy.