What is the issue for NSW?
With an aging population, NSW is expected to have increased incidences of cardiovascular disease The most common of these is coronary artery disease. In the event of multivessel coronary artery disease, when two or more large coronary arteries narrow due to plaque buildup, coronary bypass grafting (also called heart bypass surgery) is the preferred procedure to restore blood flow to the heart. Current synthetic vascular grafts don’t perform at low diameter applications and routinely fail within two years of being implanted. So better synthetic vascular grafts are needed.
Currently, clinical trials often use animal models to assess safety and efficacy of new vascular grafts, and not transgenic tools that are commonplace in other fields of biology. Transgenic tools are organisms or cells whose genome has been altered to more accurately reflect patient comorbidities in mouse models.
What does the research aim to do and how?
The proposed research will incorporate transgenic tools. Chronic comorbidities that are prevalent amongst cardiovascular patients will be recreated with the aim to investigate the effects of dyslipidaemia (elevated cholesterol levels) and diabetes on vascular grafting.