“In addition to more EU funding for cardiovascular research, my idea is to remember our European roots and foster greater collaborations across the continent,” he says. “I want to encourage joint projects across European countries, regardless of their economic wealth. Rich countries can do so much to help poorer countries in terms of designing educational programmes and tools, and facilitating research networks.”
The ESC, he adds, should also work to develop activities in partnership with other disciplines, including general practitice, nursing the European Society of Hypertension, European Society of Nuclear Cardiology and radiology.
Komajda, who has spent the majority of his career at the Pitié Salpetrière Hospital in Paris, where he has risen through the ranks from lecturer to head of the Cardiovascular and Surgical Departments, will become ESC President in 2010. His previous ESC roles, which include chairing the Working Group on Heart Failure (2000-2002) and the Congress Programme Committees for Stockholm 2005 and Barcelona WCC 2006, give him an insider's knowledge of the organisation.
In his term of office, Komajda also wants to strengthen links between the ESC Board and National Societies. “With such a big structure to the ESC, which is composed of 51 National Societies, 19 Working Groups, five Associations and five Councils, there is a danger the organisation could become a bit anonymous," he says. "I would like to introduce a personal touch, providing the opportunity for more interaction between the leadership and different bodies."
Komajda's research interests have focussed on the genetics of dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, with a view to offering genetic analysis for families with the condition. The diagnosis and treatment of heart failure has been another prominent theme in his career. As one of the principal investigators on the EUROGENE Heart Failure Project, he has facilitated a European network of nine different centres from seven countries, which have enrolled 3000 patients with a view to identifying the genes involved in heart failure. “Here we hope to identify modifier genes that influence the clinical presentation and prognostic stratification of heart failure,” he explains, adding that the project should eventually allow identification of patients requiring intensive follow-up and care.
Komajda's time as President of the French Society of Cardiology (2002-4) gave him a foretaste of what it will be like to steer the ESC. “I really enjoyed the opportunity to meet lots of different people whom I wouldn't have met in my day-to-day work as a cardiologist," he says. "Such contacts have allowed me to look at issues from a different perspective, and taught me how to negotiate."
The first stamp of Komajda's leadership is that Paris, his home city where he lives with his wife and daughter, has been put firmly on the ESC Congress circuit by hosting the ESC Congress 2011. The scale of the meeting presided over by Komajda is likely to be in sharp contract to the last Paris meeting, held back in 1980, when just 800 participants attended.