This interview is with Clinical Medicine Insights: Cardiology editorial board member Dr Arnon Blum. Clinical Medicine Insights: Cardiology is an open access journal published by Libertas Academica.

Editor in Chief Dr Martin M. LeWinter has recently issued a call for papers.

What is the primary focus of your research?

Endothlial function and cardiovascular prevention.

What are the most exciting developments arising from current research in your area?

Exercise is a powerful tool to prevent cardiovascular disease, to enhance endogenous stem cell production and mobilization. It is more important than weight, and could replace medications.

Who are your main collaborators? Please describe your work with them.

I have been in the NIH working with Dr. Richard O.Cannon III.

How did you come to be working in your research area?

I have always seen cardiovascular disease through "immunological glasses", I saw the acute myocardial infarction as an acute inflammatory event, the unstable angina pectoris and coronary artery disease as a cyclic immunological phenomena - and through this gate I continued to explore the cardiovascular world.

With time I relaized that the most important and efficient and cost-effective means to treat cardiovascular disease is to prevent it, and to understand the mechanisms of pathogenesis, and that explains my decision to "invest" in cardiovascular prevention research.

What do you think about the development of open access publishing? Have you published in an open access journal? What motivated you to do so?

I am not sure about the yield yet. Things change with time, and it could be that it will gain more popularity and importance, but right now - it does not prove to be a very effective tool that is able to bring to the public important novel insights.

What articles and/or books have you published recently?

I have published several review papers on heart failure in the Israeli Medical Association Journal and in a journal called Congestive Heart Failure (ahead of print).

I also have a review paper that will be published in September 2009 about geneder differences in heart disease - "Are men and women created equal?" that will be published in Gender Medicine.

I have published several original papers in the American Journal of Cardiology about exercise and stem cell mobilization and endothelial function, and in ATVB on the genetic identification of endothelial progenitor stem cells.

In the near future 2 original papers of mine will be published - one in the Israeli Medical Association Journal - on the variability of hs-CRP levels in patients with coronary artery disease, and another one on th effect CXCR4 inhibitor on stem cells mobilization - that will appear in Cytotherepy.