Seminar

Molecular and Functional Biomarkers: focus into the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems

Jesús Ruiz-Cabello, PhD

Cardiovascular and pulmonary research has suffered a continuous evolution in the last years with frequent technological swings due to the intrinsic complexities of these organs and the presence of most of the imaging modalities to display better a particular feature. In this presentation, I will focus on the role of molecular, cellular and functional imaging to understand pathological processes in some cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, with special emphasis in a selection of application studies in atherosclerosis and pulmonary hypertension performed in our laboratories. Of particular interest in our approach are the characterization of early vulnerable plaque and visualization of the chronobiology of the inflammatory processes in these diseases. I will also present functional and molecular biomarkers in animal models of pulmonary hypertension. Recent data also support the idea that some biochemical biomarkers are related to vascular and ventricular remodeling or adaptation. Our group is doing a comprehensive metabolomics characterization of this disease in relation to the mechanotrasdunction origin and consequent flow and pressure changes sensed by endothelial cells. In this line, I will present novel functional imaging biomarkers characterizing this disease, those related to changes with arterioventricular coupling using flow MRI into the pulmonary artery and cine MRI acquisitions to examine RV vascular function.