Clinical expertise
Dr Alexander Lyon’s clinical expertise includes:
- heart failure
- cardiovascular diseases caused by cancer treatments, known as cardio-oncology
- chemotherapy-induced heart failure
- Takotsubo syndrome
- cardiac gene therapy
- novel molecular and biological therapies for heart failure
He runs a specialist clinic for patients with Takotsubo syndrome focusing on risk prediction and management of refractory symptoms.
He is also:
- clinical lead for the cardio-oncology service, Royal Brompton Hospital (2011-present)
- chair of UK Cardio-Oncology Consortium (2012- present)
- a member of the Heart Failure Association Translational Research Committee (ESC: 2012-present)
He sees patients with a range of clinical problems including:
- hypertension
- stress and heart valve disease
- coronary artery disease
- cardiomyopathy
Dr Lyon also specialises in the investigation of cardiac symptoms such as chest pain, breathlessness, palpitations (racing heart), dizzy spells and general cardiac health checks to guide risk factor management.
Locations
Our specialist provides care at these locations:
Biography
Dr Alexander Lyon is a consultant cardiologist and Director of the Cardio-Oncology Centre of Excellence at the Royal Brompton Hospital.
Dr Lyon trained at Oxford University where he was awarded a first class degree and a clinical scholarship. Alex studied for his PhD in gene therapy for heart failure at Imperial College. His clinical interests are in the field of cardio-oncology (cardiovascular disease in cancer patients), heart failure, complex hypertension, Takotsubo syndrome and the effects of major stresses of the heart, and gene therapy for chronic heart failure.
Alex has been the clinical lead for the Cardio-Oncology service at the Royal Brompton Hospital since 2011, specialising in surveillance and cardioprotection from modern cancer drugs, risk stratification and treatment of all cardiac complications of cancer treatment. The service was recently awarded a Gold Cardio-Oncology Centre of Excellence award from the International Cardio-Oncology Society in 2022.
Alex is a co-chair of the first European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Cardio-Oncology Guidelines for the management of cardiovascular disease in cancer patients and survivors. He is also a co-author of the 2021 BSE-BCOS guideline on echocardiography in cancer patients and the 2022 ESMO guideline on the diagnosis and management of immunotherapy-related toxicities.
Research
Dr Lyon is co-organiser of the first ESC Cardio-Oncology conference in Florence in 2025. Alex is a past chair of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Council of Cardio-Oncology (2022-2024), the past president of the British Cardio-Oncology Society, a member of executive board of the International Cardio-Oncology Society (ICOS), and he was the cardiology advisor to the charity Macmillan Cancer. Alex is a co-investigator of the first Leducq Cardio-Oncology Transatlantic Research Network funded from 2020-2025 ($6M).
His research interests include:
- abnormal calcium physiology in heart failure
- the influence of stress and high catecholamine levels on cardiac function
- mechanisms of ventricular arrhythmias in heart failure
- biological therapies for heart failure – these include regenerative medicine therapy and myocardial tissue engineering. Dr Lyon is UK national coordinating investigator for CUPID 2 – the first UK cardiac regenerative medicine therapy trial for advanced heart failure
- RDT-PEF trial assessing the role of renal sympathetic denervation in patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction
- spatio-temporal patterns of mitochondrial dysfunction in the intact heart
- chemotherapy-induced heart failure and novel therapeutic options for patients with heart failure caused by anti-cancer therapies – Dr Lyon was a co-Principal Investigator
- new high-resolution raspberry Pi multi-camera system for remote monitoring of leg oedema in heart failure patients with Heartfelt Technologies
He is coordinating both a national and European strategy to advance knowledge and improve care for individuals with Takotsubo syndrome.
Watch Dr Lyon discuss Trust research into exploring the role of gene therapy in helping treat people with heart and lung diseases:
Teaching
Dr Lyon has presented at numerous national and international meetings in the field of cardiac calcium pathophysiology, regenerative medicine therapy in heart failure, chemotherapy-induced cardiac dysfunction and heart failure, and Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
He is a senior lecturer at Imperial College London, where he supervises PhD students.
Publications
Dr Lyon has published over 250 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and he is a deputy editor of the European Heart Journal.
His H-index is 69.
He was co-chair of the 2017 Global Cardio-Oncology Summit which hosted 325 specialists from 33 countries at the Royal College of Physicians in London in September 2017.
