A system "absolutely pivotal" in regulating blood pressure affects other areas of the circulatory system and could be an underlying cause of aortic diseases, according to Alan Daugherty, PhD.Dr. Daugherty, associate vice president at the University of Kentucky, will discuss his research at the SVS Vascular Research Initiatives Conference in May. His talk, "Angiotensin II and Cellular Complexity of the Aorta, a Recipe for Aneurysmal Location," is the second annual Alexander W. Clowes Distinguished Lecture. This lecture at VRIC honors the late Dr. Clowes, an SVS member, frequent VRIC presenter and renowned surgeon-scientist.
"The renin-angiotensin system is a hormone system that has been known for decades to regulate blood pressure and fluid balance," said Dr. Daugherty. It is now known that the system has many bioactive peptides, although the much of the focus remains on numerous effects exerted by angiotensin II. Angiotensin II is produced from a precursor called angiotensinogen through cleavage by the enzymes renin and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). Drugs that stop the synthesis or activity of the angiotensin II, such as ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), are currently used to treat blood pressure and congestive heart failure, but may also be useful to treat aortic diseases as well, Dr. Daugherty said.
His current research focuses on how angiotensin II works as a regulator of producing and propagating aortic bulges. Working with mice, he and his colleagues have discovered that "the aorta doesn’t just bulge anywhere during infusion of angiotensin II. The bulges are localized to one region in the abdominal aorta, and also in the aortic area adjacent to the heart," said Dr. Daugherty.
"There are biological properties of angiotensin II that we haven’t recognized fully," he said. "We don’t know why it’s causing the pathology that is experimentally in a very localized manner." The researchers hope that inhibiting the actions of angiotensin III will reduce aortic diseases, he said. "We hope that the highly consistent data in animal models can be translated to human studies."
He cautioned that drug selection will be important, as major differences exist in drug properties and their effectiveness in reducing aortic diseases.
"We need to be specific about the drug and pick the one that will be highly effective in reducing the effects of angiotensin II around the clock, day after day," he said.
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Register today for the Vascular Research Initiatives Conference and prepare to be immersed in research that ultimately can change lives.
"Think of VRIC as the ‘Annual Meeting’ for basic and translational vascular researchers," said Edith Tzeng, M.D., chair of the SVS Research and Education Committee. "We’re presenting research before it reaches the patient — but it’s research that can eventually lead to great breakthroughs in patient care."
The Vascular Research Initiatives Conference will be held Wednesday, May 9, in San Francisco. For the past several years, VRIC has been held the day before the American Heart Association’s Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology (ATVB) Scientific Sessions, May 10-11. The title of this year’s AHA meetings is "Vascular Discovery: From Genes to Medicine."
Both meetings will be at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Visit vsweb.org/VRIC18.