BACKGROUND Despite recent improvements in angioplasty and placement of drug-eluting stents in treatment of atherosclerosis, restenosis and in-stent thrombosis impede treatment efficacy and cause numerous deaths. Research efforts are needed to identify new molecular targets for blocking restenosis. We aim to establish angiogenic factor AGGF1 (angiogenic factor with G patch and FHA domains 1) as ...

BACKGROUND Fatty acids constitute the critical components of cell structure and function, and dysregulation of fatty acid composition may exert diverging vascular effects including proliferation, migration, and differentiation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). However, direct evidence for this hypothesis has been lacking. We investigated the role of elongation of long-chain fatty acid me...

Phenotypic switching of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) is known to play a critical role in the development of atherosclerosis. However, the factors present within lesions that mediate VSMC phenotypic switching are unclear. Oxidized phospholipids (OxPLs), including 1-palmitoyl-2-(5-oxovaleroyl)-sn-glycero-3-phosphorylcholine (POVPC), are active components of minimally modified low density ...

BACKGROUND Hyperphosphatemia is a major factor promoting the formation of arterial medial calcification in chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, arterial medial calcification begins to occur during the early stages of CKD, when hyperphosphatemia is not yet apparent. It is predicted that other factors also play a role. The aim of the present study was to determine the role of pro-inflammatory n...

The ageing population continues to suffer from its primary killer, cardiovascular disease (CVD). Despite recent advances in interventional medicinal and surgical therapies towards the end of the 20th century, the epidemic of cardiovascular disease has not been halted. Yet, rather than receding globally, the burden of CVD has risen to become a top cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Most...

Abstract Finding optimal survival strategies of living systems embedded in fluctuating environments generally involves a balance between phenotypic diversification and sensing. If we neglect sensing mechanisms, it is known that slow, resp. fast, environmental transitions favor regime heterogeneous, homogeneous, response. We focus here on the simplest non-trivial case, i.e. two randomly switchin...