Cell Adhesion in CHD

The project „cell adhesion in coronary heart diseases“ makes use of genetically modified mouse lines to analyze the role of integrin-mediated adhesion of vascular smooth muscle cell and cardiomyocyte to the extracellular matrix (cell-matrix adhesion) and neighboring cells (cell-cell adhesion) in vivo. We aim to characterize ?-Parvin and ?-Parvin-regulated signal pathways that control vascular and cardiomyocyte function and the progression of CHDs (such as aneurysms, hypertonia or hypertrophy) by a combination of genetic experiments in mice, cell biology and proteomic analysis. A second aim is the development of therapeutic strategies for the treatment of CHDs using synthetic peptides that bind to and inactivate cell adhesion proteins.