The proper functioning of the cardiovascular system is critical to the maintenance of our health and well-being. The heart pumps blood through a vast network of vessels, delivering oxygen and nutrients to all organs of the body and removing metabolic waste products. Debilitating diseases of the cardiovascular system, such as cardiac ischemia, stroke, hypertension, and atherosclerosis are prevalent.
Maintenance of a healthy circulation requires not only the appropriate functioning of the heart, but also of the lungs, kidneys, blood vessels, and nervous system. Dysregulation of molecular pathways in any of these target organs can result in disease. In addition, the presence of many inflammatory and metabolic disorders (such as diabetes) can have dramatic effects on cardiovascular health.
Regeneron scientists are investigating basic molecular mechanisms essential to the maintenance of normal vascular and circulatory function, and they are applying this knowledge to identify new targets for the treatment of disease at the cellular and whole-organ level.
This broad understanding of vascular biology at Regeneron in conjunction with extensive cardiovascular disease modeling have allowed the expansion of these discoveries to therapeutic approaches for several models of disrupted blood pressure homeostasis such as: systemic hypertension, pulmonary hypertension, eclampsia, portal hypertension, heart failure, and atherosclerosis.
Highlights
VelociGene® technology is used to reveal the expression patterns of genes involved in the regulation of cardiovascular function. The image on the left shows that one gene of interest is expressed specifically in large arteries (A), while the image on the right shows that another gene is expressed in the heart (H), but not in arteries.
Another gene expressed very strongly in cardiac arteries, but only sparsely in cardiac veins.