The 2024 Autumn Term Cardiac Function Seminar series talks will be back Wednesday 04th September, when we will be welcoming Thomas Jepps, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Talk Title: The microtubule network in the cells of the arterial wall – a potential target for the treatment of hypertension
Talk Time: 12:30 – 13:30 UK time (please note time for this talk)
Location: Hybrid Meeting (Hybrid – online Via Teams and Meeting room 427/428 4th Floor ICTEM, Hammersmith Campus, Du Cane Road W12 0NN
Please note the seminar organizers and the Head of Section would like to request that attendees will in the majority of cases be physically present in the seminar room and a participation via Teams shall be the exception.
Bio Sketch
Thomas Jepps is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and leader of the Vascular Biology Group. He obtained his PhD from St. George’s University of London, U.K. in 2013 before moving to Denmark and receiving Marie Curie, Lundbeck Foundation and Carlsberg Foundation postdoctoral Fellowships. In 2019, Thomas was made Associate Professor and received the Lundbeck foundation Young Investigator Award to investigate the impact of microtubules in arteries.
Thomas’ research focuses on blood vessels. He is interested in the cells that control the diameter of arteries, namely smooth muscle cells, which can contract and relax. In hypertension and atherosclerosis, hyper-contractility and restructuring of arterial smooth muscle cells leads to increased arterial tone and/or reduced blood flow. In the smooth muscle cells, several membrane proteins display altered function and expression, but without an understanding of how their membrane expression is controlled, development of new therapeutics to treat hypertension remains a distant dream. Thomas has been at the vanguard of research into how the microtubule network regulates the membrane expression of certain ion channels and receptors in the cells of the artery wall. His work has led him to investigate the impact of colchicine in the treatment of hypertension. As such, Thomas’ research is fully translational, ranging from analysis of single cell protein expression and ex vivo vascular reactivity, to clinical trials of novel anti-hypertensive therapeutics.
Short talk description:
Thomas’ talk will focus on the microtubule network in vascular smooth muscle cells, which acts like a road network to traffic proteins to and from the cell membrane. Thomas will show how the microtubule network regulates the expression of key ion channels and receptors in vascular smooth muscle cells using the motor protein dynein. Furthermore, Thomas’ will show how, by disrupting the microtubule network, vasodilatations that were attenuated in arteries from hypertensive rodents can be restored. Thomas will then show how, in vivo, administration of colchicine – a clinically approved drug known to disrupt the microtubule network and have cardiovascular protective effects – to hypertensive rats reduced blood pressure, improved vasodilatations, attenuated vascular remodeling and inflammation, and suppressed left ventricular fibrosis. Finally, this work has been translated to humans, where improvements in vascular conductance are observed after oral colchicine administration. Thus, this talk will aim to convince you that colchicine may be a promising therapeutic for the treatment hypertension.
If you are joining online and you have not yet signed up to join the Cardiac Function Seminar Team group in order to participate in the seminar online please register via the linked tab or here which will provide access to the Team.
Please do this ahead of time of the talk.
The Cardiac Function Seminar Team
(Prof. Thomas Brand, Natasha Richmond)
