Ming-Sing Si1, Jin Ye Yeo2
1Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiac Surgery, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2TP Editorial Office, AME Publishing Company
Correspondence to: Jin Ye Yeo. TP Editorial Office, AME Publishing Company. Email: editor@thetp.org.
This interview can be cited as: Si MS, Yeo JY. Meeting the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TP: Dr. Ming-Sing Si. Transl Pediatr. 2025. Available from: https://tp.amegroups.org/post/view/meeting-the-deputy-editor-in-chief-of-tp-dr-ming-sing-si.
Expert introduction
Dr. Ming-Sing Si (Figure 1) is a congenital cardiac surgeon at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA, and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. He is an Associate Professor-in-Residence in the Department of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He provides the full spectrum of surgical care for pediatric and adult patients with congenital heart disease. He also provides the full scope of surgical treatment for pediatric heart failure, including mechanical circulatory support and heart transplantation. He received his medical education and surgical training at UCLA, UC Irvine, UC San Francisco, and the University of Michigan. He received his postdoctoral research training at Stanford University.
Dr. Si's research interests are pediatric heart failure pathogenesis and cardiovascular regeneration. He also has clinical interests in complex heart valve repair for congenital heart disease. His laboratory research focuses on identifying the pathophysiology of heart failure and cardiac fibrosis, as well as the development of novel therapies for these diseases. His team is focused on investigating the developmental and postnatal functional roles of the SLIT-ROBO signaling axis in the cardiovascular system by exploring diverse in vitro and in vivo experimental approaches.
Figure 1 Dr. Ming-Sing Si
Interview
TP: What inspired you to venture into congenital cardiac surgery?
Dr. Si: The surgical treatment for congenital heart defects requires diverse and highly individualized constructive procedures. This is different from other surgical specialties in which resection and removal of diseased tissue are more prevalent. There is great variety in the physiologies, defect morphologies, and reparative procedures in congenital heart disease, making this specialty especially appealing. Finally, we can still improve many things in our field, offering many opportunities for clinical, translational, and basic research and innovation.
TP: Could you provide an overview of the current landscape of publications on congenital heart surgery?
Dr. Si: Most publications in congenital heart surgery are clinically-based research, with a preponderance of them being single-center retrospective studies. Comparatively, fewer studies are based on clinical databases such as the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery Database. These studies tend to be coauthored by more investigators from different institutions. Although fewer, some exciting translational and basic science research has been published by congenital heart surgeons.
TP: As a pediatric cardiac surgeon, what are some of the greatest challenges of performing cardiac surgery in children?
Dr. Si: The variety in the physiology and heart defect morphologies combined with the unknown impact of extracardiac factors, such as genetics and other organ system abnormalities, underpin many of the challenges that a congenital heart surgeon has to consider when assessing the risk and benefit of the decisions we make: the type of operation, the operative strategy, the timing of surgery, the type of patch material, strategy of postoperative management, postoperative surveillance, etc. Another great challenge is the lack of ideal patch material for valve repairs. Many congenital deformities of heart valves result in a paucity of valve tissue, making repair difficult or impossible without the addition of tissue. However, any patch material that we utilize will not grow and cause further scarring.
TP: Are there any recent advancements in surgical techniques that hold promise for cardiac surgery?
Dr. Si: Looking back in history, we can identify advancements in surgical technique that have made great impacts and have stood the test of time (that is to say, we know what the long-term outcomes are for a surgical technique or strategy). In the current era, we as a field are always questioning the long-term outcomes of a particular innovation, which can only be achieved with careful follow-up over a long period.
TP: Over the years, tissue engineering with stem cell therapy has received increased attention and advancements. How have your research and the advancements in stem cell therapy and tissue engineering changed the treatment of congenital heart diseases/ impacted your practice?
Dr. Si: When I first started my training nearly two decades ago, stem cell therapy and tissue engineering were very hot topics that received a lot of attention from investigators, clinicians, the mainstream media, and patients. In other fields, stem cell therapy and gene engineering have made huge impacts on patient care, namely, CAR-T cell therapy for cancer. However, for solid organ failure, tissue engineering and stem cell therapy have yet to make an impact. We have realized that one of the most important barriers is the lack of complete tissue vascularization of a thick tissue construct. We have active research in this area to create functional vasculature in tissue-engineered constructs in vitro, which essentially tries to replicate what evolution had achieved over hundreds of millions of years in the generation of perfused vasculature and a closed cardiovascular system.
TP: Recently, your team discovered a novel role of the SLIT-ROBO signaling axis in the cardiovascular system (1). How do you foresee this finding, together with your ongoing projects, changing the way we understand disease progression and develop novel therapies for congenital heart diseases?
Dr. Si: This research focuses on adverse cardiac remodeling, which can be detrimental to cardiac function. This can be especially amplified in the setting of the Fontan circulation. We hope that our ongoing research in adverse cardiac remodeling and the creation of perfusable vascular networks in vitro will lead to therapies that can inhibit or decrease the amount of adverse cardiac remodeling commonly seen in single ventricle heart disease, so that it can improve the performance of the Fontan circulation and improve the survival and functional capacity of these patients.
TP: How has your experience been as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TP?
Dr. Si: My experience as an Editorial Board Member at TP has been rewarding, exciting, and collegial. It is a privilege to work with such outstanding editors and staff.
TP: As Deputy Editor-in-Chief of TP, what are your expectations and suggestions for its development?
Dr. Si: I have high expectations for TP and hope that all leading clinical and research investigators will consider this journal as a venue to communicate their research findings. Continued rapid, constructive review of submitted manuscripts and affordable publication fees will be important in maintaining and elevating this journal.
Reference
- Liu X, Li B, Wang S, et al. Stromal Cell-SLIT3/Cardiomyocyte-ROBO1 Axis Regulates Pressure Overload-Induced Cardiac Hypertrophy. Circ Res 2024;134(7):913-930.