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Inside the Center of Excellence for Cardiometabolic Testing at Quest Diagnostics

Healthier World with Quest Diagnostics

Podcast Episode: Inside the Center of Excellence for Cardiometabolic testing at Quest Diagnostics

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EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Healthier World designed to give you instant insights, we introduce the Cleveland HeartLab and its role as a Center of Excellence for cardiometabolic, endocrine, and wellness testing at Quest Diagnostics. In this episode, Dr. Maeson Latsko hosts a segment featuring various leaders from Cleveland HeartLab and Quest Diagnostics, including Marc Penn, MD, PhD, Mouris Saghir, PhD, Tim Collier, PhD and Jim Davis. They discuss their mission to improve heart disease prevention and associated metabolic conditions through cutting-edge research and personalized care.

This episode will

  •  Discuss the need for better chronic disease prevention (1:40)
  • Review the cardiometabolic approach to healthcare (2:15)
  • Highlight the technology behind Cleveland Heartlab testing (2:45)
  • Introduce Cleveland Heart Lab as the center of excellence (3:30)

Presenters:

  • Maeson Latsko, PhD, Quest Diagnostics

Contributors:

  • Maeson Latsko, PhD, Quest Diagnostics
  • Trisha Winchester, PhD, Quest Diagnostics 
  • Millicent Kee, MSN, FNP-BC, Quest Diagnostics Center of Excellence at Cleveland Heart Lab

Time of talk: 5 minutes

Recording Date: September, 2025

Date posted on the CEC: September 29, 2025

Disclosure: The content was current as of the time of recording. To learn more, please review the additional resources below for information on our cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine, and wellness offerings as well as educational resources and insights from our team of experts. At Quest Diagnostics, we are committed to providing you with results and insights to support your clinical decisions.

To learn more, please review the additional resources below for information on our cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine, and wellness offerings as well as educational resources and insights from our team of experts. At Quest Diagnostics, we are committed to providing you with results and insights to support your clinical decisions.

Additional Resources:

Inside the Center of Excellence for Cardiometabolic testing at Quest Diagnostics

[00:00:00] Welcome to Healthier World with Quest Diagnostics. Our goal is to prompt action from insight as we keep you up to date on current clinical and diagnostic topics in cardiovascular, metabolic, endocrine, and wellness medicine.

Welcome to a special episode series called Instant Insights, a podcast episode designed to give you quick and highly impactful clinical pearls in just a few minutes. I'm Dr. Maeson Latsko, and today we bring you inside Cleveland Heart Lab, where cutting edge science meets groundbreaking research for personalized care.

Cleveland Heart Lab serves as the center of excellence for cardio, metabolic endocrine and wellness testing at Quest Diagnostics. But what does it mean to be the center of excellence? Today I bring you a clip highlighting what Cleveland Heart Lab means to the people who make it all happen.

[00:01:00] This clip features Dr. Mark Penn, founder and chief Medical Officer for Cleveland Heart Lab, as he discusses the need for better chronic disease prevention. Dr. Maurice Sege, general manager and vice President for the Cardiometabolic Endocrine and Wellness franchise at Quest Diagnostics as he reviews the cardiometabolic approach to healthcare.

Maeson: Dr. Tim Collier, Scientific Director of Research and Development at Cleveland Heart Lab discussing the technology behind our testing. And finally, Jim Davis, chairman, CEO and President of Quest Diagnostics Highlights Cleveland Heart Lab as the center of excellence for cardiometabolic endocrine and wellness testing. Enjoy listening to the great minds behind the lab.

Marc: Primary care docs are challenged these days. They're seeing a lot of patients. Patients are having a lot of different chronic problems. 50% of patients who have heart attacks these days either have normal or controlled cholesterol levels, no longer is driving cholesterol levels down to a level of 70, absolutely protective.

[00:02:00] The reality is to identify patients who either need further LDL lowering, better insulin lowering, better blood sugar control, weight loss, all those things we need to identify risk. So now the way to go is to focus on prevention.

Mouris: Our cardiometabolic approach is very, deep rooted in preventing heart disease and associated metabolic condition like diabetes, like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and like chronic kidney disease.

We took the best of Cleveland Heart Lab, which is all around heart disease prevention and. The boutique feel of Cleveland Heart Lab and combine that with the best of Quest.

Tim: At the Quest Cardio Metabolic Center of Excellence at Cleveland Heart Lab, we use numerous technologies to help develop new assays. And the first is a technology called Liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry or LCMS, [00:03:00] and that is a technology that gives us unparalleled sensitivity and specificity in terms of being able to analyze components of a complex mixture.

Another platform that we've recently used is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, or NMR. We literally use quantum mechanics to look at a patient's blood. Uh, composition and we use it primarily to look at the different sizes and quantities of lipoproteins or cholesterol particles in the patient's blood.

Jim Davis: Clearly, we have made this the center of excellence for Cardiometabolic Testing and Quest Diagnostics. And why did we choose to invest here and invest in Cleveland? Cleveland is actually an incredible ecosystem from a healthcare standpoint.

One of our three goals, um, which really is the purpose to me, is about creating a healthier world. And we do that by empowering better health through diagnostic insights. We try to provide information and analysis to patients and to providers to [00:04:00] help them live healthier lives.

That's a wrap on this episode of Healthier World with Quest Diagnostics. Please follow us on your favorite podcast app and be sure to check out Quest Diagnostics Clinical Education Center for more resources, including educational webinars and research publications. Thank you for joining us today as we work to create a healthier world, one life at a time.