Life and Times of Leading Cardiologists: Gregg Stone
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Life and Times of Leading Cardiologists: Gregg Stone

E. Magnus Ohman, MD

Disclosures

May 31, 2016

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Editor's Note: Dr Ohman's guest is Gregg W. Stone, MD, professor of medicine, Columbia University; director, Cardiovascular Research and Education, Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy, New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center; and codirector, Medical Research and Education, The Cardiovascular Research Foundation, New York. This interview was recorded April 1, 2016.

An Innate Curiosity

E. Magnus Ohman, MD: Hello. I'm Magnus Ohman from Duke University, and I want to welcome you to another edition of Life and Times of Leading Cardiologists. We are very fortunate to have Dr Gregg Stone with us today. He is professor of medicine at Columbia University, director of Cardiovascular Research and Education at the Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy, and head of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation. Gregg, welcome.

Gregg W. Stone, MD: Thanks, Magnus.

Dr Ohman: You've been leading the area of interventional cardiology for many years now. To what do you attribute your success? What has made you be the man that people go to if they have a new device that they want to test?

Dr Stone: You're very kind, Magnus. I think I've been very fortunate to be surrounded by a lot of people who have helped me in my career, who have stimulated me and motivated me to work harder. Perhaps I was blessed with an innate curiosity and desire to want to discover what is unknown. Most important, however, I've been around people who gave me the opportunity and mentored me in ways that have put me into the position to learn the skills, to be able to ask and then try to answer unknown questions.

It started when I was very, very young, even as early as high school, and then continued in undergraduate and medical school—every step of the way up to where I am now. This is a field where nobody does this by themselves. If you surround yourself and take advantage of working with so many other smart, gifted people, and if you can make a small contribution collectively, then I think you're very fortunate.

Dr Ohman: You referred to innate curiosity. When and where did this start?

Dr Stone: It started very early. I don't know where it started or why it started, but I was always fascinated by science and always wanted to know the way the world worked. I remember when I was in elementary school, building a computer. You have to remember that this was back in the 1960s.

Dr Ohman: This was before computers.

Dr Stone: I remember that there was a book. It was about this thick [holds up thumb and index finger to indicates approximately 5"] and it was for building this big, giant circuit board. Basically, you'd push a button and it would turn on two or three lights. My father helped me with this as a school project and it took us about 9 months to build it. It was really extraordinary, and it got me thinking. I had a chemistry laboratory at home and I did my own experiments. I was ordering all sorts of probably illegal drugs, back then, and compounds and elements. I tried to recreate the elemental table in my basement, yes. There were about 100 elements there and I think I was able to collect about 70 of them.

Dr Ohman: Wow. You said drugs. You mean compounds, probably.

Dr Stone: Yes, of course.

Dr Ohman: Just to keep it clean, because in the '60s—

Dr Stone: That's right. No, especially in elementary school. There was no experimentation with drugs.

Growing Up in the Midwest

Dr Ohman: Where did you grow up, Gregg?

Dr Stone: I grew up in Ohio. Shaker Heights, which is a suburb of Cleveland. I'm a Midwest guy, born and bred and true.

Dr Ohman: And the garage still stood after all your experiments?

Dr Stone: Actually, it was pretty interesting because when I was very young—I probably shouldn't say this—I would forge my father's signature and order nitric acid, sulfuric acid, chlorine gas, and phosphorus that you'd have to store in liquid. I had this giant chemistry lab. After I moved out after high school, my folks had to call a hazmat team to be able to clean up the house. There were so many chemicals there. The fire department came. They didn't know what to do. It was pretty interesting.

Dr Ohman: Your father and mother were very forgiving. What did they do?

Dr Stone: Neither were in medicine or science. My father was in advertising and he ran an advertising firm in Ohio. My mother was a housewife. It's an amazing story because my mother was an incredibly intelligent, gifted woman who went to college at Ohio State University when she was 15 years old. When she was a junior, she met my father and they got serious. So her father said, "Okay, that's it. You can drop out of college now because you are ready to get married." And that's a true story. It's amazing how times have changed.

Dr Ohman: That must have sparked in you a certain amount of interest in education.

Dr Stone: Yes, always. I've always been around intelligent people, and my parents always emphasized learning, higher education, and trying to do the most with what you have.

Sibling Rivalries and Research Opportunities

Dr Ohman: Where did you go to university?

Dr Stone: I went to the University of Michigan. You have to realize that my mom went to Ohio State and my brother went to Ohio State, so of course, I had to be different and went to the University of Michigan. You can imagine the rivalries we had growing up.

Dr Ohman: Do you still talk?

Dr Stone: We do now. I must say that, back then, it was pretty intense.

Dr Ohman: The University of Michigan is a great school. Did you have a lot of fun?

Dr Stone: Michigan was fantastic. It was absolutely the right combination. There were higher academics and incredible opportunities. At the same time, you'd find yourself as a person and you'd make friendships that would last forever. There were also great research opportunities at the medical school, and that's where I first became interested in research.

Dr Ohman: Tell us more about that. How did you go from being a very bright chemistry student to somebody who wanted to practice medicine?

Dr Stone: I became interested at the University of Michigan. I remember going to my counselor and expressing this interest. My counselor's name was Otto Graf. "Autograph." I'll never forget that. He said, "You should do some research." And I said, "Well, how do I do that?" And there was a whole list of possible mentors who took undergrads. So, I met a gentleman by the name of William Lands, who was a professor of biochemistry and was investigating a new field called prostaglandins.

This was when prostaglandins were being discovered, and I remember going to meet him. He gave me a book of proceedings. It was this thick. It was basically an abstract book, because there was nothing published. And he said, "Go read these." So, I'm reading about prostaglandins E, G, and I, and I really don't know what I'm looking at, but I'm soaking it all in. I worked with him for a couple of years and figured out how to change the oxygen microenvironment concentration of renal cells and see what that would do to prostaglandin biosynthesis, and I published a very early paper.[1]

Dr Ohman: Yes, I was going to say that you must have published at a very early age.

Medical School on the East Coast

Dr Ohman: Where did you go for medical school?

Dr Stone: I went to Johns Hopkins University for medical school, which was an extraordinary experience and shaped me as a physician for the rest of my life.

Dr Ohman: Who were your mentors at Hopkins? I presume Dr McKusick was there when you were there.

Dr Stone: Yes. Victor McKusick was the father of modern genetics, and he was the head of medicine at the time. And Myron Weisfeldt, who was the head of cardiology. I got to know Bernadine Healy Buckley and actually did some projects with her. There was also Ken Baughman. The department of cardiology was so strong.

I got to know an electrophysiologist very, very well—and that's where my early research was—a gentleman by the name of Phil Reid, who was a professor of both cardiology and electrophysiology and chemistry.

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