Ischaemic heart disease is one of the leading causes of death. Protease-activated receptor 2 (PAR2) is widely expressed within the cardiovascular system and is known to mediate inflammatory processes in various immunocytes, such as macrophages, mastocytes …

Loss of functional cardiomyocytes by cell death after myocardial infarction is most critical for the subsequent left ventricular remodeling, cardiac dysfunction and heart failure. Numerous studies have implicated that dysre- gulation of autophagy might …

Background: The poor long-term patency ratio of vein grafts prevents patients from benefiting from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG). It is reported that external venous stents have notably improved the patency ratio of stented vein grafts in animal …

Heart disease remains the number one killer of women in the US. Nonetheless, studies in women and female animal models continue to be underrepresented in cardiac research. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), the most commonly inherited cardiac disorder, …

Background: After myocardial infarction, necrotic cardiomyocytes release damage-associated proteins that stimulate innate immune pathways and macrophage tissue infiltration, which drives inflammation and myocardial remodeling. Circulating inflammatory …

Translation of stem cell therapies to treat injuries and diseases of the spinal cord is hindered by lack of real-time monitoring techniques to guide regenerative therapies intra- and postoperatively. Thus, we developed an ul- trasound (US), photoacoustic …

Rationale: In vivo molecular imaging in preclinical animal models is a tool of choice for understanding the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in cancer development and for conducting drug development research. Moreover, combining several imaging …

BACKGROUND Oxidative stress and myocardial apoptosis are features of doxorubicin-induced cardiac toxicity that can result in cardiac dysfunction. Previous studies showed that microRNA-143 (miR-143) was expressed in the myocardium and had a role in cardiac …

Oxidative stress and subsequent cardiac myocyte apoptosis play central roles in the initiation and progression of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury. Homeobox transcript antisense intergenic RNA ( Hotair ) was previously implicated in various …

Patients with metabolic syndrome (MetS) often exhibit generalized endothelial and cardiac dysfunction with decreased nitric oxide (NO) production and/or bioavailability. Since phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibitors restore NO signaling, we hypoth- esized …