Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Atherosclerosis, the thickening of blood vessel walls, is the main culprit behind heart attacks and strokes. Cardiovascular disease, the category under which heart attack and stroke fall, is the leading cause of death in the industrialized world and poses a large economic burden. Therefore, it is important to find ways to identify and treat atherosclerotic plaques at a high risk of leading to heart attack and stroke, also known as vulnerable plaques. Such plaques often feature bleeding from within the plaque, known as intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH). This project seeks to create plaques that lead to IPH in two animal models that each cater to different applications. The small animal model is suitable for studies that require higher sample sizes while the large animal model possesses anatomy more closely related to human patients and is suitable for clinical imaging and catheter-based procedures. Both models will be examined at multiple time points after onset of IPH to determine its effects on plaques over time, a part of plaque development about which we know little. These models also provide the opportunity to develop and refine medical imaging techniques for identifying and monitoring these plaques within patients. Lastly, therapeutic agents that are targeted towards preventing and lessening the effects of IPH can also be tested in these models, with the ability to monitor these treatments with the previously mentioned imaging techniques. Knowledge gained from this project will clarify our understanding of how atherosclerotic plaques change over time and increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, allow the development of clinical imaging techniques to identify vulnerable plaques in patients, and potentially produce new strategies for treating vulnerable plaques.