Manchester Native Zac Cox Recognized for Outstanding Medical Achievements

In a story from David Lipscomb University by Janel Shoun-Smith (Lipscomb’s senior manager of communication), about the world’s top academic journal on heart failure, Manchester native Zac Cox is recognized for his research that gained a nearly $2 million grant.

Zac Cox is an associate professor of pharmacy and an inpatient clinical pharmacist at Vanderbilt Medical University Center. Cox has earned both national and international attention for his research on various drug therapies for patients with acute heart failure.

Cox previously worked with a drug called Milrinone, among other ways to reduce diuretic resistance in heart failure patients, earning Vanderbilt a $1.8 million grant from AstraZeneca (a multi-national pharmaceutical and bio-pharmaceutical company) to study a new line of medications previously only used for diabetes, in acute heart failure patients.

Alongside Vanderbilt’s Dr. JoAnn Lindenfeld, Cox is the co-primary investigator in the study called “A Randomized, Open-label Study of Dapagliflozin in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Admitted with Acute Heart Failure.”

In Shoun-Smith’s story, she writes that in the same year Cox won the grant, he was also invited in May of 2019 to present his research at the European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure Congress in Athens, Greece. His presented his work, called “Diuretic Strategies for Loop Diuretic Resistance in Acute Heart Failure: The 3T trial“, a study in which tested drugs that could eliminate excess fluid in patients who are resistant to the standard approaches.

Cox is currently published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure for “Diuretic Strategies for Loop Diuretic Resistance in Acute Heart Failure: The 3T trial”, and will also be published in this journal ” as a co-author of a review of diuretics in heart failure.” Cox stated that these are the top journals for heart failure in the world. In addition to being published in these journals, Cox also co-authored a chapter in the book “Cardiorenal Syndrome in Heart Failure” (a book on best practices for overcoming diuretic resistance) and is currently in a clinical trial as co-inventor and co-principal investigator Dr. Nick Haglund on “a novel inhaled milrinone formulation.” Cox has pioneered the patented inhaled form of this drug, a drug normally administered intravenously and often taken by patients at home waiting for a heart transplant. Inhaling the drug reduces the risk of infection, thus enhancing quality of life for these patients.

According to the story written by Shoun-Smith, Cox states, ” Everything that we are doing in these investigations is novel. We know that one-third of patients who leave the hospital are not fully decongested. One reason is that they are resistant to the class of medications that we use. The risk of that patient dying in the next year is really high. So we are demonstrating that different classes of medications can help with the decongestion and thus produce less chance of death in chronic heart failure patients.”

Cox has worked in dual appointment at Lipscomb and Vanderbilt, striving to provide the finest patient care, researching Vanderbilt’s heart failure patients, and supervising David Lipscomb University students “in their Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences.”

Cox has been recognized world-wide for these achievements, including praise from the Cleveland Clinic cardiologists, which has provided the professor chances to “share the best practices around the world and builds the scientific community’s respect in Lipscomb’s research, thus boosting the chance of future grants and publications”, Cox said.

One can’t help but to feel a sense of home town pride, seeing one of our own succeed.