Lionel Opie

Lionel Opie OMSFRCPFRSSAfFACC
Born	Lionel Henry Opie (1933-05-06)6 May 1933 Hanover, South Africa
Died	20 February 2020(2020-02-20)(aged 86) Cape Town, South Africa
Spouse	Carol Opie
Academic background
Education	Bishops Diocesan College
Alma mater	University of Cape Town Lincoln College, Oxford
Academic work
Discipline	Cardiology
Institutions	University of Cape Town
Notable works	Drugs for the Heart(1980) Heart Physiology: From Cell to Circulation(1998)

Lionel Henry OpieOMSFRCPFRSSAfFACC(6 May 1933 – 20 February 2020) was a South Africancardiologist.He was a professor of medicine at theUniversity of Cape Town,where he conducted both experimental and clinical research on heart disease andcardiovascular physiology,metabolism, andpharmacology.He was the founding director of the university's Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research and the founding editor of theJournal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.He also served as president of theInternational Society for Heart Research.

Early life and career

Opie was born on 6 May 1933 inHanover,a small town in theKaroo regionof South Africa.He attendedBishops Diocesan CollegeinCape Town.His interest in medicine was inspired by the example of his father, who was a district surgeon,and by thediscovery of penicillin.He attended theUniversity of Cape Town,graduating in 1955 with first-class honours.He served his medical internship at the nearbyGroote Schuur Hospital.Thereafter, between 1956 and 1959, he was aRhodes ScholaratLincoln College, Oxford,where he completed hisDPhil.His doctoral dissertation was about the physiology ofartificial respiration.

After leaving Oxford, Opie spent two years inBoston, Massachusetts,where he researched myocardial metabolism as a postdoctoral fellow at theHarvard Medical School.That research culminated in another doctoral dissertation, this one on myocardialintermediary metabolism,which earned him anMDfrom the University of Cape Town in 1961.Thereafter he returned to England to pursue furtherbasic scienceresearch under the mentorship ofHans KrebsandErnst Chain.He was appointed as a consultant in medicine at theRoyal Postgraduate Medical SchoolinLondonin 1969.In 1970, he andRichard Bingfounded theJournal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology,which became the official publication of theInternational Society for Heart Research.

University of Cape Town

In 1971 he returned to the University of Cape Town to establish a new research programme, focused on thepathophysiologyofmyocardial ischemia.His research was initially funded byChristiaan Barnard,who donated the proceeds from sales of his bestselling bookOne Life.Then from 1976 to 1998 his heart disease research was funded by theMedical Research Council.His clinical activities were based at the Groote Schuur Hospital, where he founded the Hypertension Clinic in the 1980s and led regular sessions in the hospital's Cardiac Clinic.In addition, the University of Cape Town granted him a personal chair in medicine in 1980.

In the 1990s, Opie partnered withDerek YellonofUniversity College Londonto establish the University of Cape Town's Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research. Yellon said that Opie was "delighted" to delay his retirement to establish the institute.He was the institute's director until 2010, in which capacity he ran its highly acclaimed annual conference series, Cardiology at the Limits.He also had a longstanding appointment atStanford Universityas a visiting professor from 1984 to 1998,and he co-founded the Society of Heart and Vascular Metabolism in 2000.After his lengthy tenure as editor of theJournal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology,he andHenry Neufeldco-foundedCardiovascular Drugs and Therapy,and he was later appointed as international associate editor atCirculation.

Scholarship and publications

Opie published over 540 journal articles, as well as 46 books and 159 book chapters.His central research interests werecardiovascular physiology,cardiovascular metabolism, and cardiovascularpharmacology;in particular, he worked on the metabolic mechanisms of ischemic heart disease andmyocardial reperfusion,the cellular metabolism ofcalcium ions,the role ofcyclic adenosine monophosphatein cardiac electrical instability and arrhythmia, and the use ofβ-blockersandcardioprotective mechanisms.His first major paper, published in 1970, introduced his so-called glucose hypothesis of cardiac metabolism.

Opie's most famous book isDrugs for the Heart,which first appeared in serialisation inThe Lancetin 1980; across eight volumes it became "the standard reference on the treatment of heart disease"or "the bible of cardiovascularpharmacology".Heart Physiology: From Cell to Circulation(1998), illustrated by several hundred of Opie's own line drawings,won the University of Cape Town Book Award, andLiving Longer, Living Better(2011) received a prize from the BritishMedical Journalists' Association.

Personal life and retirement

At the age of 80 Opie retired from clinical practice,but he remained involved in research as an honorary professor until 2016.He was ill for the last few years of his life and died ofpneumoniaon 20 February 2020 in Cape Town.He was married to Carol Opie (née Sancroft-Baker), with whom he had two daughters.

Honours and awards

In 2006, PresidentThabo Mbekiadmitted Opie to theOrder of Mapungubwe,granting him the award in silver for "his excellent contribution to the knowledge of and achievement in the field of cardiology".In 2012 the University of Cape Town's Department of Medicine gave him a special award for his prolific and seminal research contributions.He was long rated as an A-level researcher by the South AfricanNational Research Foundation,a rare feat for a medical doctor, and he was upgraded to A1-rating in 2008; in 2014 he additionally received the NRF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Among other associations, Opie was a fellow of theRoyal College of Physicians,theAmerican College of Cardiology,theEuropean Society of Cardiology,the International Society for Heart Research, theRoyal Society of South Africa,the Physiological Society of Southern Africa, and the College of Physicians of South Africa; and he served stints as president of the International Society for Heart Research, the South African Cardiac Society, and the South African Hypertension Society.He holds honorary doctorates from theUniversity of Copenhagenand theUniversity of Stellenbosch.The Lionel Opie Preclinical Imaging Core Facility at the Hatter Institute, unveiled in 2015, is named after him.