Dr Zakariye Ashkir (2021, DPhil Medical Sciences) wins AICC Best Scientific Abstract Award
Exeter College postgraduate student Dr Zakariye Ashkir (2021, DPhil Medical Sciences) has recently received the Best Scientific Abstract Award from the Association of Inherited Cardiac Conditions for his research on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
The Association of Inherited Cardiac Conditions (AICC) is the national body for healthcare professionals managing patients and their families with genetic heart disease. It is a membership organisation that provides a forum in which healthcare professionals can meet, learn, educate, collaborate, and ultimately work towards providing the very highest level of healthcare in patients.
While at the AICC’s annual conference in Cambridge last November, Dr Ashkir showcased his key findings from his DPhil research on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition where the heart muscle becomes abnormally thick and predisposes patients to sudden cardiac death, heart failure and stroke. For his research, Dr Ashkir studied microstructural and metabolic abnormalities in HCM patients, comparing those with causative genetic mutations in sarcomeric genes (which is the cause of HCM in around 40% of patients) to those without. These findings help explain the increased risk of sudden cardiac death in sarcomeric HCM patients.
Exeter College sends warmest congratulations to Dr Ashkir on a fantastic achievement, the second of the year after he secured an academic grant from Exeter College to enable him to participate in the Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) 2024 Conference in London, where he won the Early Career Award for Translational Research.