Studying the zebrafish to find new ways to protect against plaques in vessels

Joint NC3Rs/BHF PhD Studentship: Using Zebrafish embryos to identify genes  that protect against atherosclerosis (Professor Paul Evans) 

Atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty deposits in blood vessels, begins at the branches and bends of arteries. This plaque disturbs blood flow, causing a phenomenon called low ‘wall shear stress’ (WSS). In turn, this leads to abnormal growth of blood vessel cells. In contrast, high WSS protects arteries by stopping blood vessel cells from multiplying. Understanding how this protective effect occurs could lead to the development of new treatments for atherosclerosis. This PhD studentship, co-funded by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, aims to develop new models for studying the response of blood vessel cells to different types of blood flow. Previously, scientists have used flow bioreactors – incubators that mimic the blood vessel environment – but this had limited success because the bioreactors do not generate the same shear stress that happens in the vessels. They also do not contain all the different cell types found in human blood vessels. To address this, Professor Paul Evans is developing zebrafish embryo models to look for genes that are affected by changes in blood flow. This will determine whether zebrafish are good alternative models for studying atherosclerosis, and they hope to identify new genes that could protect against the disease in humans.