Rationale: Coronary collateral growth is a natural bypass for ischemic heart diseases. It offers tremendous therapeutic benefit, but the process of coronary collateral growth isincompletely understood due to limited preclinical murine models that…
Coronary microvascular dysfunction is prevalent among people with diabetes and is correlated with cardiac mortality. Compromised endothelial-dependent dilation (EDD) is an early event in the progression of diabetes, but its mechanisms remain…
Voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels in vascular smooth muscle are essential for coupling myocardial blood flow (MBF) with the metabolic demand of the heart. These channels consist of a transmembrane pore domain that associates with auxiliary Kvβ…
Objective-We determined whether increasing adherence of multipotent stromal cells (MSCs) would amplify their effects on coronary collateral growth (CCG). Methods and Results-Adhesion was established in cultured coronary endothelials cells (CECs) or…
The regulation of the coronary circulation is a complex paradigm in which many inputs that influence vasomotor tone have to be integrated to provide the coronary vasomotor adjustments to cardiac metabolism and to perfusion pressure. We hypothesized…
The coronary circulation is both culprit and victim of acute myocardial infarction. The rupture of an epicardial atherosclerotic plaque with superimposed thrombosis causes coronary occlusion, and this occlusion must be removed to induce reperfusion.…
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to determine the mechanism by which mitochondrial oxidative stress impairs collateral growth in the heart. APPROACH AND RESULTS: Rats were treated with rotenone (mitochondrial complex I inhibitor that increases reactive oxygen…
Ischemic heart diseases (IHD) cause millions of deaths around the world annually. While surgical and pharmacological interventions are commonly used to treat patients with IHD, their efficacy varies from patient to patient and is limited by the…
Mitochondrial dysfunction in obesity and diabetes can be caused by excessive production of free radicals, which can damage mitochondrial DNA. Because mitochondrial DNA plays a key role in the production of ATP necessary for cardiac work, we…