Understanding why blood vessels harden as we age

Mechanisms of vascular smooth muscle cell ageing and calcification (renewal)

Professor Catherine Shanahan at King’s College London is studying why, as we age, our arteries accumulate bone-like deposits and harden. This hardening increases our risk of developing high blood pressure or having a heart attack or stroke. Currently there is no treatment for this ‘vascular calcification’, and we need to find new ways to prevent or treat it, as it leads heart and circulatory disease. Scientists have discovered that certain factors can accelerate ageing, such as genetic faults and the accumulation of toxic proteins. Professor Shanahan is studying one of these toxic proteins, called prelamin A, which accumulates during normal ageing and makes the cells in the blood vessel wall calcify. There are several different processes and pathways within a cell that are thought to be responsible for this and, in this project, Professor Shanahan will find out if interrupting these pathways using drugs and by modifying genes can delay blood vessel ageing. She will also study calcification mechanisms, in the hope she can identify new targets for treatments. Understanding how the cells of the blood vessel wall age and become calcified could reveal clues to designing new treatments to stop or slow down these age-associated diseases.