Alexander Visconti
Research Mentor(s): Andre Monteiro Da Rocha
Mentor Department: Cardiology – CVC Cardiovascular Regeneration Core
Authors: Alex Visconti, Andre Monteiro da Rocha
Session: Session 4 (1:00pm – 1:50pm)
Presentation Type: Oral
Abstract
The number of Americans over 65 y.o. currently surpasses 46 million individuals, and it is projected that by 2030 the number of elderly people in the U.S. will be above 60 million. Therefore, understanding mechanisms of age-related changes in cardiac physiology, and the decrease in physiological reserves and resilience to stressors such as ischemia, are fundamental to developing strategies to improve quality of life in aging. By identifying mechanisms of aging, therapeutic development for cardiac aging can be generated to increase human quality of life. SNAI2, the gene encoding the slug protein was determined through Poly-A tail RNA sequencing of hiPSC-derived ventricular cardiomyocytes from Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome (HGPS) as a possible repressor of genes involved in intracellular calcium handling and regulators of diastolic dysfunction, making SNAI2 a therapeutic target. Our hypothesis is that slug expression increases with aging. We will verify our hypothesis through immunofluorescence (IF) against slug in hearts of young male (YM), young female (YF), old male (OM), and old female (OF) HET3 mice. For analysis confocal microscopy images will be analyzed with FIJI to compare differences in expression across groups.
