Cardiomyopathy is a leading cause of heart failure in children, and there are currently no effective treatments. Could emerging therapies that successfully target the root cause of the condition in adults also work well in children? That was the question Dr....
In the realm of cardiac health, an exciting new study has cast light on the intricate details of our hearts, revealing significant differences between the left and right ventricles' fibroblasts. This research, conducted by a team of dedicated scientists from the...
For children diagnosed with complex heart conditions like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), the diagnosis can be frightening for families and challenging for healthcare providers since the trajectory of the condition is often uncertain. As a leading cause of sudden...
An innovative cardiovascular start-up, HDAX Therapeutics, is the latest company to win $250,000 in funding following another year of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research’s Entrepreneurship for Cardiovascular Health Opportunities (ECHO) program. The ECHO program...
Several members of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research (TRCHR) participated in Vascular 2023, a five-day conference held in Montreal from October 25-29. The conference is a hallmark event organized by several Canadian specialist and research organizations,...
Researchers at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research have developed an innovative approach to better understanding the complex signaling mechanisms underlying heart failure. A recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) offers...
When Pedro Marques was 20, otherwise a thin and healthy teenager, he came face to face with what turned out to be a family health problem: his cholesterol levels were through the roof. Shocked, he started a course of statin therapy – a course he continues today at age 30.
“If I didn’t discover it, if I didn’t start taking medications, I would likely have been an early victim of a vascular incident,” Pedro says.
His problem now sits under a microscope. Pedro earned a Ted Rogers Centre Education Fund award for promising work in the area of cholesterol, inflammation and atherosclerosis. It is, as he calls it, a “personal investment.”
Under the supervision of SickKids senior scientist Sergio Grinstein, the idea is to discover new therapies to prevent or treat atherosclerosis. Pedro’s project focuses on how “good” HDL cholesterol gets transported in our cells, in contrast to “dangerous” LDL cholesterol that is strongly connected to atherosclerosis. HDL, by its nature, is an avenue for the body to redistribute cholesterol and keep arteries clear, therefore, reducing the harmful effects of excessive LDL.
This is a very important area of research, as Ted Rogers Centre executive director Dr. Mansoor Husain says: “There is no bigger predictor of vascular disease than the ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol in the body.”
Pedro has honed in on the SR-BI protein, a type of scavenger receptor that recognizes and binds HDL, and is very important in promoting HDL’s homeostatic roles. “Learning the physiological role of SR-BI when it comes to HDL cholesterol could open new avenues to prevent and treat inflammation and atherosclerosis.”
Pedro and Sergio took to cells from the liver and adrenal glands, which they discovered to have high levels of SR-BI. (In those glands, cholesterol is used in positive ways, to produce bile and steroid hormones respectively).
Their investigations led to understanding how SR-BI works, how it behaves inside cells, and confirming that it leverages cholesterol for good use. It appears to be the gateway that permits HDL to unload excess cholesterol into a cell to be properly managed – thus removing it from the bloodstream.
Yet what they truly must understand is how cholesterol moves in a cell, and how SR-BI is controlled. How exactly do the body’s cells put that receptor into service?
The key here will be to uncover a way to chemically promote the SR-BI function. If they are able to boost its levels, or make cholesterol bind to it even more effectively, the body could remove far more cholesterol than it can now.
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