Education
This multidisciplinary group includes members of and interacts with the Departments of Pathology, Surgery and Biochemistry. Educational opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to pursue mechanistic research employing molecular biologic methods, and transgenic mice are available. Studies in progress are designed to alter migration, proliferation, and apoptosis of vascular smooth muscle cells in order to generate mice that exhibit a hypocellular neointima expected to be more prone to rupture.
The progression of atherosclerosis in mice that manifest diabetes and insulin resistance is under active investigation. Phenotypic alteration of vascular smooth muscle cells is a seminal feature of atherosclerotic lesions. Efforts to define intracellular signaling mechanisms responsible for this phenotype change entail characterization of interaction, between single stranded DNA and transcription factors.
