Collaboration Key in MSU Researchers Study of PVAT and Hypertension
By Chuck Carlson
There is no shortage of researchers working on the relatively understudied impact of perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT) and its relationship to hypertension. Most of the blood vessels in the body have some fat tissue surrounding them; this is the PVAT. We know that PVAT affects how the blood vessels work, but we don’t fully understand how or why that happens.
Indeed, to the Michigan State University team working as part of the long-standing Program Project Grant (PPG), it has been a “dream” partnership.
“Collaboration makes you smarter,” said Dr. Stephanie Watts, one of the numerous researchers involved in the project that recently produced a paper that was published in the American Journal of Physiology. “We feed off each other. It’s been a dream collaboration.”
The project involves a diverse group of faculty that includes the Departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Mechanical Engineering, Physiology, Large Animal Clinical Services, Biomedical Engineering, and Biomedical and Molecular Biology as well as the Colleges of Engineering, Human Medicine, Natural Science, Osteopathic Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine.
“It really is a team effort,” said Dr. Rance Nault, the paper’s corresponding author. “We’re all bringing our different expertise.”
Along with Dr. Nault and Dr. Watts, the other authors on the paper, all from MSU, are Research Assistants Janice Thompson and Lizbeth Lockwood; Ph.D. candidates C. Javier Rendon, Emma Wabel and Leah Terrian; and Dr. Cheryl Rockwell, from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology; Dr. G. Andres Contreras, from the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences; and Dr. Sudin Bhattacharya, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Pharmacology and Toxicology.
The National Institutes of Health-sponsored four-project grant with the express purpose of learning more about PVAT’s impact on the vascular system incorporates numerous other researchers as well.
They are all looking at PVAT, or fat, the substance that surrounds major arteries and veins in the body. The newly published study describes in detail the cells that make up PVAT.
“This study is really about understanding what this tissue is made of in terms of cell types,” Dr. Nault said. “We have the technology now that we can start looking at a lot of genes in individual cells and see what the cells are and what they are expressing in this tissue.”
And while the existence of PVAT has long been known, its impact remains a topic that deserves more study.
“PVAT makes substances that help arteries relax but it does so much more,“ Dr. Watts said. “If we can understand more about how PVAT works, we can then better understand health and disease.”
Dr. Nault said he hopes that by the end of the study, the intricacies of PVAT will be better understood and that new information could lead to new, more effective medication in the ongoing battle against hypertension.
“The goal is to better understand hypertension and know whether there are different ways we can deal with it,” he said. “We want to see what these cells do when they’re faced with really high blood pressure and if they change their expression. This is very foundational work for asking those bigger questions later down the line.”