Newswise — An $18.8 million federal research grant to Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research " the largest in the organization's history " will allow SFBR scientists to embark on several groundbreaking new studies on cardiovascular disease that are unique in the world.
"Some of the new projects we're undertaking are so innovative and rely so heavily upon the unique resources and expertise of our facility that they're not simply on the cutting edge, they're actually cutting a new edge in scientific research," said Dr. John L. VandeBerg, chief scientific officer of SFBR and the grant's principal investigator. "We expect the payoff to be a tremendous advancement in our ability to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease, our nation's No. 1 killer."
A summary of some of those new initiatives is as follows:
"¢ One novel study will focus on how cells in the lining of arteries, particularly endothelial cells, vary in their response to disease-causing stimulants such as LDL cholesterol, along with the search for genes that regulate those cellular responses. Since the proliferation of endothelial cells triggers the process that causes atherosclerosis " the build up of fatty plaques in the arteries " the identification of ways to decrease their response to disease risk factors could be used for long-term prevention of heart disease.
"¢ In a second new initiative, scientists will search for genetic variation among individuals in the body's production and circulating levels of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), a type of adult stem cell produced by bone marrow. Because these stem cells play a long-term protective role against atherosclerosis and help the body heal after an acute injury or trauma, scientists want to find ways to increase the body's ability to produce them so that they can both prevent heart attacks and help repair damage to the heart and arteries after one occurs.
"¢ A third new study will examine whether an individual's diet influences the body's production and circulating levels of endothelial stem cells. Scientists will look in particular at the effects of the high-fat, high-cholesterol diet so common in Western societies today.
"¢ In another effort being conducted only at SFBR, scientists will search for entire networks of genes that influence physiological risk factors, such as LDL cholesterol or obesity, versus searching for one disease-influencing gene at a time. This research method, only recently possible because of advances in molecular genetics, will advance scientific understanding of disease processes and how genes interact to influence those processes.
The grant, funded by the National Institutes of Health and officially titled "Diet and Genotype in Primate Atherosclerosis," is commonly called the "Baboon Program Project" because it funds a number of separate but related research projects that rely on the baboon model, particularly the unique multi-generation pedigreed baboon colony at SFBR's Southwest National Primate Research Center.
"No one else has the capacity to do this work in primates because nobody else has these large families of pedigreed primates in which we have carefully characterized in detail the circulating factors in the blood that are risk factors for atherosclerosis," said Dr. VandeBerg.
Other resources that make SFBR ideally suited to conduct this research include the baboon gene map developed by SFBR scientists to complement the raw genetic data recently made available from the sequencing of the baboon genome; the outstanding scientific capabilities of SFBR scientists in the areas of cellular biology, molecular biology and statistical genetics; and the unmatched analytical computing power of the organization's AT&T Genomics Computing Center.
While cardiovascular disease claims the lives of more people in the United States than any other illness, Dr. VandeBerg is encouraged by the fact that death rates have decreased considerably over the past 30 years as wonderful new methods of prevention and treatment have been developed. "It is my hope that, with findings from our studies, we can make some significant contributions to this exciting field of medicine, and heart disease can lose its status as the No. 1 killer in our country," he said.
RSS