We are pleased to announce that Dr. Patrick C.H. Hsieh from Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan will join Second Conjoint RIKEN – ISM 2026 as a speaker and give a presentation entitled “Microbiota-Metabolite Control of Cardiac Injury and Repair“.

Summary:

Dr. Patrick C.H. Hsieh, a distinguished cardiovascular surgeon and physician-scientist specializing in regenerative medicine and bioengineering, will discuss how the gut-heart axis fundamentally reshapes our understanding of myocardial repair, revealing that cardiac responses to injury are governed not autonomously but through a complex cross-organ network driven by the gut microbiota and their derived metabolites.

The heart has long been viewed as self-governing in its response to damage. However, emerging evidence now establishes that dysbiosis and the loss of gut microbiota alter the systemic immune landscape, impairing post-infarction cardiac repair. At the center of this regulatory axis are microbial metabolites, particularly short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) such as acetate, propionate, and butyrate, which act as key signaling molecules modulating immune-metabolic signatures.

During his talk, Patrick Hsieh will present evidence demonstrating how these metabolites confer cardiac protection, enhance adaptation to pressure overload, and create new therapeutic opportunities, including microbiota modulation to optimize the efficacy of cardiac cell therapy in non-human primates and to influence host responses to biomaterial implantation.

Framed within a unified therapeutic framework, this presentation aligns closely with the themes of Session 2: Microbial Metabolites as Strategic Mediators of Host Health, bridging short-chain fatty acid immune regulation and the therapeutic potential of microbial signaling molecules to advance precision cardiovascular regeneration and repair.