The Bicuspid Aortic Valve Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Biomarkers of growth and remodelling in patients with bicuspid aortic valve
IRAS ID
316543
Contact name
Froso Sophocleous
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bristol
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 15 days
Research summary
This study involves laboratory analysis, data management and storage of clinical samples and data collected for two previous studies:
1. The stem cell study which is part of the Bristol Biomedical Research Centre portfolio of studies. This study will provide plasma samples for BAV patients with dilated aorta but did not collect samples for patients with non-dilated aorta.
2. The Outcome Monitoring After Cardiac Surgery (OMACS) study, which is part of the Bristol Biomedical Research Centre blood conservation in cardiac surgery programme. This study will provide samples for BAV patients with non-dilated aorta as a control group.
Patients were recruited and consented, and the relevant clinical samples collected as part of the above two studies, so this protocol does not cover these areas.
As a continuation of the CIs previous work (Sophocleous et al, Cells 2022), this study will search in blood circulation for five differentially expressed miRNA targets identified by Sophocleous et al. in dilated vs non-dilated aortic segments of Bicuspid Aortic Valve patients.
This study will use RT-qPCR to measure the miRNA levels in blood plasma samples for a BAV non-dilated group of patients consented through the OMACS study and compare to miRNA levels for a BAV dilated group consented through the stem cell study. This will allow us to seek potential miRNA biomarkers of BAV-aortopathy.
The second aim is, on a subgroup of these patients, to perform next generation sequencing (NGS) to fully screen through the RNA. This will allow cross-validation of the NGS results with the RT-qPCR, as well as running a novel comparison between the blood and tissue segmental NGS analyses (tissue NGS results from: Sophocleous et al, Cells 2022).
REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/PR/0409
Date of REC Opinion
20 Apr 2023
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion