Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more

suPAR

When cardiac risk biomarkers will become really useful (and save money?)

The news is awash in studies of cholesterol-lowering statins and a much-anticipated (and expensive) class of drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors. Clinical trials show that now-generic (and cheap) statins reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, although some patients report they can’t tolerate them. The data is still to come showing whether PCSK9 inhibitors have the same risk-lowering effect, as opposed to their effects on LDL cholesterol, which are robust.

When /if doctors have to start deciding who should take drugs that cost thousands of dollars a year and who shouldn’t, biomarkers may come in handy. How about a panel of markers like the one studied by Emory cardiologist Arshed Quyyumi, MD and colleagues?

At the recent American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago, research fellow Salim Hayek, MD reported on a five-marker panel and how it could predict the risk of cardiovascular events (that is: death, heart attack, hospitalization for heart failure) in a group of patients who underwent cardiac catheterization at Emory hospitals.

The five biomarkers are: C-reactive protein (CRP, measures inflammation), suPAR (soluble urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor or suPAR, predicts kidney disease), fibrin degradation products (FDP: blood coagulation), heat-shock protein-70 (HSP70, cellular stress) and troponin (hs-TnI, cardiac muscle damage). Data on three of these were published in 2013.

The Emory team keeps adding more biomarkers, and the ability of the accumulated information to add to what doctors can figure out easily — the Framingham score and its successors — becomes stronger.

Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

AHA meeting highlights — an Emory-centric view

Poring over the abundance of information presented at major scientific meetings is like trying to drink from a firehose.  Imposing an Emory-centric filter on this year’s American Heart Association Scientific Sessions meeting in Los Angeles, here are three highlights, with a shoutout to the AHA journal Circulation, which provides a database of meeting abstracts.

Alginate encapsulation, a therapeutic delivery tactic to get stem cells to stay in the heart

Presenter Rebecca Levit, MD, a postdoc in cardiology division chair W. Robert Taylor’s laboratory, was a finalist for an Early Career Investigator Award.

 Stem cell therapies for myocardial repair have shown promise in preclinical trials, but lower than expected retention and viability of transplanted cells. In an effort to improve this, we employed an alginate encapsulation strategy for human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and attached them to the heart with a biocompatible PEG hydrogel patch in a rat MI model. Encapsulation allows for diffusion of pro-angiogenic cytokines and growth factors made by the hMSCs while maintaining them at the site of implantation…Alginate encapsulated hMSCs attached to the heart with a hydrogel patch resulted in a highly significant improvement in left ventricular function after acute myocardial infarction. The mechanism for this markedly enhanced effect appears to be increased cell survival and retention.

 Note: alginate already has a wide variety of uses, for example in culinary arts and to make dental impressions.

suPAR, a biomarker connected with depression, inflammation and cardiovascular outcomes. Step back, C-reactive protein

Depression, inflammation (Manocha, Vaccarino)

Cardiovascular outcomes (Eapen, Quyyumi)

Coronary microvascular dysfunction (Corban, Samady)

Predicting mental-stress myocardial ischemia via a public speaking test

A study probing myocardial ischemia (a lack of blood flow to the heart) induced by psychological stress, described in this Emory Public Health article. The presentation by Ronnie Ramadan examines physiological responses to a public speaking test as a way of predicting more severe problems.

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