"In vitro and in vivo study on the effects of inhibitors of angiogenesis in atherosclerosis"

Atherosclerosis is a lipoprotein-driven disease that leads to plaque formation at specific sites of the arterial tree through intimal inflammation, necrosis, fibrosis and calcification. Atherosclerotic plaques, can be classified in two main types: stable and unstable. Unstable plaques often show plaque angiogenesis and are prone to rupture, promoting thrombus formation which can lead to a myocardial infarction, stroke, and sudden death.  

We are part of an European consortium called Moglynet, which aim is to stop intra-plaque neo angiogenesis by blocking the glycolytic pathway, more specifically the PFKFB3 enzyme. In order to do that the consortium is going to synthetize anti-angiogenic compounds and  then study their effects, first on a panel of in vitro tests and then in vivo using vein graft surgery on mice, and our research group is going to focus on this last part of the project.

In order to test the anti-angiogenic capacity of new compounds we first synthetized a positive control for our future testing. After that we optimized both the aortic ring assay as a physiological in vitro angiogenesis assay and the in vivo model of vein graft surgery.