Grant: Project Grant

Atherosclerosis is the leading cause of death in Canada, resulting in as many as one in five deaths due to the various forms of this disease. Atherosclerosis is the hardening of arteries and narrowing of blood vessels through the build up of a fatty substance called plaque. While significant improvements in the management of atherosclerosis have been made, fundamental challenges towards its detection and treatment still remain. Both the ability to differentiate stable (benign) from unstable plaques (more prone to fatal cardiac events), and the role of antioxidants as therapeutics are still under developed. Tackling these issues is challenging, but could result in a substantial improvement to the life span of Canadians susceptible to atherosclerosis through earlier diagnosis, and better and safer treatment. To this end, this proposal seeks to develop and implement new diagnostic tools compatible with current medical imaging practice that can predict the stability of these plaques and to evaluate novel antioxidants that could improve disease outcomes. Our imaging agents rapidly and specifically bind to aldehydes, molecules associated with biological stress that have been shown to be strong molecular predictors of disease outcome in humans. By quantifying these stress molecules early on, we hypothesize that we can predict the severity of atherosclerosis in the individual patient non-invasively with medical imaging. Furthermore, we will investigate antioxidants that have been shown to outperform nature's best agent: vitamin E. The success of this proposal will result in a novel medical imaging agent and a novel therapeutic that could both see rapid clinical application and begin to improve the cardiovascular health of Canadians.