CVPath Newsletter January 2019
CVPath News January 2019
Allow us to wish you a fine New Year and take this opportunity to update you on some significant accomplishments of the CVPath Institute during 2018. We again thank all of our sponsors and collaborators for the support that makes such things possible.
Research first. We had many publications last year. Here, I highlight several of the more notable ones, dealing with both vascular intervention and atherosclerosis:
• January: A state-of-the-art review on vascular calcification in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging HERE which highlighted our understanding of the pathologic meaning of coronary calcification.
• March: We published a paper in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on the role of CD163+ macrophages in atherosclerosis progression. Specifically, we examined the relationship of these cells to plaque angiogenesis and inflammation.
• May: We wrote an editorial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Interventions examining whether coronary vasomotion returns after the Absorb fully-bioabsorable scaffold HERE.
• June: We authored an editorial in the European Heart Journal dealing with the role of intracoronary optical coherence tomography in identifying plaque erosion HERE.
• September: We demonstrated in an experimental animal model, how drug-eluting stents prevent normal return of endothelial function which is a major cause of neoatherosclerosis. This can be ameliorated by using a newer mTOR direct inhibitor versus the canonical inhibitors such as sirolimus HERE.
• December: We published a research paper examining the incidence of downstream emboli for different drug-coated balloons used in the treatment of peripheral artery disease HERE.
• December: We also published a review in Nature Review Cardiology on the current status and future prospects for fully bioresorbable scaffolds HERE.
• December: To close out the year, we also published an original research paper on the pathology of peripheral vascular disease. This appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging HERE.
We very much hope you enjoy reading these and other works coming from our Institute.
Grants received: We’re proud to announce that we are a recipient (along with several European and American partners) of the Leducq Transatlantic Networks of Excellence Program HERE. Our project is entitled “Defining the Roles of Smooth Muscle Cells and other Extracellular Matrix Proteins in Late Stage Atherosclerotic Plaque Pathogenesis”. Our research network will receive $6 million to pursue this work over the next five years. Further information can be found HERE.
Finally, we welcomed Craig Kennedy to the CVPath Board of Directors. Craig is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Senior Advisor at Tapestry Networks, and an external advisor to the Morocc-based OCP Group. Prior to joining Hudson, Kennedy served for many years as president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. For more information on Craig—and our other board members–please refer to our website (www.cvpath.org)
Overall, it was a very good year for CVPath and we look forward to an even better one in 2019. Thanks once again for your support—and to keep up with our latest news, please join us on Twitter (@CVPath-Md or @AlokeFinn).