Do people with heart disease have changes in the way blood vessels sense blood pressure?

Joint BHF/Daphne Jackson Fellowship: Mechano-sensor gene mutation in human cardiovascular disease

The heart continuously pumps blood into the blood vessels, exerting a force on the walls of the blood vessels. It’s long been thought that this pressure is ‘sensed’ somehow by the specialist cells that line the vessels, and converted into signals that are important for blood vessel health. Recently an important sensor of mechanical force has been discovered. It is a protein known as Piezo1, and it could be an important target for treatments for heart and circulatory diseases. With funding from the BHF and the Daphne Jackson Trust, Dr Deivasikamani is using the pioneering UK Biobank database to investigate whether mutations in Piezo1 are associated with increased risk of disease. Biobank contains DNA samples and medical information from hundreds of thousands of UK volunteers. This information is available to researchers to search for clues to improve the prevention and treatment of common and rare diseases. Using Biobank, Dr Deivasikamani will analyse whether people with heart or circulatory diseases have any changes in the Piezo1 gene, compared to healthy people. She will then re-create any changes that she finds in the lab, to see how they affect the protein and the way it works. This could lead to a new understanding of Piezo1’s role in disease, and pave the way for treatments.