Subodh Verma

Dr Subodh Verma is a cardiac surgeon-scientist and Professor at the University of Toronto. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery and a past recipient of the Howard Morgan Award for Distinguished Achievements in Cardiovascular Research and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Gold Medal in Surgery. He is an appointee of the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, Royal Society of Canada. As of February 2019, Dr Verma has an h-index of 67, with nearly 18,000 citations in 385 publications.

Dr Verma has co-authored two state-of-the-art NEJM reviews on mitral valve repair and bicuspid aortopathy. A meta-analysis led by him helped shape the recommendations of the American College of Cardiology and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) for best revascularization choice in individuals with diabetes. He continues to be an active contributor to several CCS guidelines and co-authored the 2018 Diabetes Canada guidelines and 2018 AATS consensus guidelines on bicuspid aortic valve-related aortopathy. Dr Verma has served on the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia since 2008.

Dr Verma has leadership roles on all 5 ongoing global heart failure trials in diabetes – Dapa-HF, DELIVER, EMPEROR-Preserved, EMPEROR-Reduced and SOLOIST-WHF – as well as the SELECT (semaglutide), CLEAR SYNERGY (OASIS 9) and VESALIUS (Evolocumab) trials. Locally, he spearheads the CardioLink platform that focusses on conducting randomized trials in cardiovascular medicine, diabetes and perioperative medicine.  The CardioLink trials include the SEARCH-AF (post-cardiac surgery atrial fibrillation; supported by the Heart & Stroke Foundation and investigator-initiated study grants from the pharmaceutical industry), NEWTON-CABG (graft patency after bypass surgery; supported by an investigator-initiated study grant from the pharmaceutical industry), EMPA-HEART (cardiac structure and function with the diabetes medication empagliflozin; supported by an investigator-initiated study grant from the pharmaceutical industry), CAMRA  (mitral valve repair; supported by the Heart & Stroke Foundation), ACE (cerebral protection during aortic surgery), and ENABLE (diabetes and secondary prevention; supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) SPOR innovative Clinical Trials [iCT] Initiative grant) trials.   

Dr Verma oversees a dynamic pre-clinical and translational research team that leverages pre-clinical disease models and clinical trial-derived data to identify novel mediators of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease as well as answer timely and relevant healthcare questions. This research has yielded 2 United States patents and is currently supported by the CIHR and HSF.