This week, please join author Michelle O'Donoghue and Associate Editor Parag Joshi as they discuss the article "Long-Term Evolocumab in Patients With Established Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease." Dr. Carolyn Lam: Welcome to Circulation on the Run, your weekly podcast summary and backstage pass to the journal and its editors. We're your co-hosts, Dr. Carolyn Lam, Associate Editor from the National Heart Center and Duke National University of Singapore. Dr. Greg Hundley: And I'm Dr. Greg Hundley, Associate Editor and Director of the Poly Heart Center at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia. Well, Carolyn, very interesting feature this week. Evolocumab, another application for that in patients with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. But before we get to that feature discussion, how about we grab a cup of coffee and discuss some of the other very interesting articles in this issue? Dr. Carolyn Lam: Oh, I'd love that. And I'd like to go first, because Craig, have you heard of hybrid debranching repair? I know, I know. I had that same look, and can I tell you about it? Because I found it so interesting. Dr. Greg Hundley: Absolutely. Dr. Carolyn Lam: Now, the management of complex aortic aneurysmal disease involving the visceral vessels is challenging due to its very high morbidity and mortality. After four decades of experience in open repair, only a few centers worldwide report laudable results. And numerous factors limit total endovascular repair, including the access to devices, experience in deploying them, and several anatomical restrictions. So, hybrid debranching procedures were introduced for those patients who are unfit for the open or endovascular excluded patients. And while these have been developed, small series have only been done and revealed a wide range of short term results. So, today's paper is very important, and it's from Dr. Oderich from UT Memorial Herman Texas Medical Center and colleagues. It's a large multi-institutional study, which contains the five year outcomes in 200 patients offering greater clarity in the usefulness and limitations of these hybrid debranching repair procedures. What they found was that hybrid aortic debranching had a low early mortality when done in lower risk patients, but mortality remained very elevated in high risk patients. And so, this suggests that deep branching could be a good alternative in patients adequate for traditional open repair, although pulmonary complications are quite common. The bypass grafts to the visceral vessels had very good patency with a five year primary patency of 90%. Permanent spinal cord injury occurred in 6%, suggesting that deep branching in experienced centers may offer outcomes comparable to centers of excellence for open thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn, very nice and so beautifully explained. Dr. Carolyn Lam: You know what, Greg? I'm on a roll and I'd like to tell you about one more, this time a preclinical study. First, a little bit about the background. You see, transplantation with pleuripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes, as we know, represents a very promising therapeutic strategy for cardiac regeneration. We even have first clinical studies in humans, but yet little is known about the mechanism of action underlying graft induced benefits. So in this paper from Dr. Weinberger from University Medical Center Hamburg in Germany and colleagues, they explored whether transplanted cardiomyocytes actually actively contribute to heart function by injecting these cardiomyocytes with an optogenetic off on switch in a Guinea pig cardiac injury model. Dr. Greg Hundley: Wow, Carolyn, this is so interesting. So what did they find? Dr. Carolyn Lam: So, light induced inhibition of endo-grafted cardiomyocyte contractility resulted in a rapid decrease in left ventricular function in about 50% of the animals that was fully reversible with the offset of photo stimulation. So in conclusion, this o