Research into Ion CHannels in human ARtery Disease - RICHARD
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Research into Ion CHannels in human ARtery Disease - RICHARD
IRAS ID
262578
Contact name
Iain Greenwood
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
St George's University London
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 2 days
Research summary
The goal of the research team is to decipher how arterial diameter is controlled by the muscle cells in the wall to gain insight into why this goes wrong in people with cardiovascular disease. We study various components of the muscle cell and how the activity of these different entities are affected by the local environment. Research on human arteries will be an important adjunct to ongoing work on rodent arteries. The proposed study will use arteries acquired from patients undergoing elective surgery that are surplus to any clinical procedure to determine how different components regulate arterial diameter and how they go wrong in cardiovascular disease. . Tissues from different operations will be placed in a container of ice cold physiological salt solution and moved to the investigators laboratory. Small arteries will be isolated from the tissue mass and cleaned of any extraneous fat, connected tissue and blood. These arteries will then be used in either functional studies or in molecular studies. The former technique measures how arterial muscle cells behave under certain circumstances whereas the molecular studies determine the identity and abundance of the underlying components. Patients will not be involved beyond agreeing to their tissue being used for research purposes. All samples will be anonymised and coded in accordance with Good Data Protection practices.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/PR/0931
Date of REC Opinion
18 Jan 2021
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion