5th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 18-19, 2019.
https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/threemt/12Transcription:
In 2016, there were 56.9
million deaths worldwide. More than 20% of these deaths were attributed to what
is known as Cardiac Ischemia. Cardiac ischemia is when blood flow is restricted
from entering a part of the heart. When the blood flow becomes restricted, the
heart doesn’t get the nutrients and oxygen required to function normally. Thus,
the heart begins to deteriorate and can eventually fail from prolonged
ischemia. It has remained the leading cause of death globally in the last 15
years. Although cardiac ischemia can be inherited, diabetes and obesity play a
key role in causing cardiac ischemia. Due to this relationship, and the current
rise of diabetes and obesity, cardiac ischemia will continue to be the leading
cause of death worldwide.
This is where my
research comes in. In the last few months, we have directly linked cardiac
ischemia with a significant increase of the enzyme SPT3 in both humans and
mice. SPT3 essentially makes lipids, a type of fat, that cause cardiac cells to
die. This discovery led us to hypothesize that SPT3, and the cell death that it
causes in the heart, leads to a vicious cycle. Once the lipids have started to
kill heart cells, the heart becomes weak and stressed. We believe that SPT3 is
also induced by stress. So, the more heart cells that die, the more SPT3 is
localized from other parts of the body to continue the cycle of lipid
production and cell death eventually leading to death from cardiac ischemia.
To test this hypothesis,
we breed mice which have no SPT3 enzyme in their hearts, and then induce
cardiac ischemia. If our hypothesis holds true, we expect these to have a
better clinical outcome than their counterparts which still have the SPT3
enzyme.
If our research can prove
that the existence of SPT3 in the heart is a contributing factor to heart
related death, we could potentially create enzyme inhibitors to turn off SPT3
and reduce the impact of cardiac ischemic deaths worldwide. Not only could we
potentially stop the progression of ischemia, but if the cycle of cell death is
true, stopping SPT3 could potentially reverse the effects of current ischemic
patients and restore the heart back to normal. Those people that dies in 2016
due to cardiac ischemia could have potentially had this reversed.
