Grant: Operating Grant

High blood pressure puts more people at risk of dying from disease than anything in the world. It causes many of these deaths by making people's heart, kidneys or breathing fail due to fluid build up in their lungs. It also causes stroke. How high blood pressure causes this damage to these important organs is complex, however, some common features have emerged. The damage caused by high blood pressure includes scarring of the kidneys and hearts as well as excessive growth of the heart muscle and dysfunction of the blood vessels. Scarring is a process that turns healthy parts of your body that do important work into non-living tissues which can not perform their functions. Many diseases involve excessive scarring. Kidney and heart disease are examples and so are diseases of the blood vessels. Scarring is produced by cells that excrete scar forming proteins. They produce these scar forming proteins in the part of the cell called the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). High blood pressure induces injuries in the kidneys and hearts that cause scarring. High blood pressure also causes damage to the blood vessels that leads to hardening of the arteries which also makes high blood pressure worse. We think if we can regulate the excessive production of scar forming proteins in the ER we can prevent some of the damage high blood pressure causes in the blood vessels, preserve their function and protect the organs like kidney, heart and brain from the damage caused by high blood pressure. Many, many people in Canadian society suffer from scarring of their kidneys, and hearts caused by high blood pressure and go on to develop strokes. These people become very sick and many can not work. If we can prevent the damage caused by high blood pressure to the blood vessels and allow them to maintain their normal function, then we can prevent the high blood pressure from damaging the kidneys, heart and brain. This would allow people with high blood pressure to live longer and healthier lives.