Researcher Spotlight: Brant Isakson, PhD, Microcirculation and Vascular Cell Communication
Brant Isakson, PhD, is a researcher in UVA Health's Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center and a professor of molecular physiology and biological physics at UVA. As a researcher, Isakson focuses on intercellular communication and how cells coordinate functioning within the vascular system.
He and his team are looking into the mechanisms different types of cells in the vasculature, such as endothelial and smooth muscle cells, use to communicate and coordinate to create the processes happening within the vascular system. His team also has a special focus on researching the microcirculation (sometimes called the "business end" of the vasculature).
At Isakson's lab, they take advantage of a plethora of techniques to study processes from the molecular and cellular level to the tissue and organ level and up to the whole animal and human.
See Isakson's selected publications. Below, Isakson discusses his work and answers our Researcher Spotlight questions.
Blood Vessels the Width of a Hair
I love the discovery aspect about research. That's really what drives the work in our lab is discovery, and we work in the microcirculation. It's the business end of the blood vessels. It's where inflammation is regulated, it's where blood pressure is regulated. And there's a lot of new things that we're discovering all the time. A lot of things that we think can be used for translational aspects of discovery of new potential targets for therapeutics.
My name is Brant Isaacson, and I'm a professor in molecular physiology and biological physics. I'm also a resident faculty of the Robert and Bernard Cardiovascular Research Center, and that's where our work is focused. We're in the cardiovascular system and specifically in the microcirculation, and we take out very small blood vessels about the width of one of your hairs and try to figure out how they dilate and how they constrict.
We use other imaging techniques to look at how lipids are taken up and how inflammatory cells enter the tissue.
Because of the collaborative environment here at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. We've been able to work closely with physicians to test some of our ideas and some of our targets that we've discovered on human samples and see if this could be a way that we could modulate blood pressure.
What are you working on right now?
We have several exciting projects in the lab right now that are being led by simply outstanding graduate students and post-docs. All of the projects are focused on cellular communication in the microcirculation, but that ranges from understanding lymphatic function in fat and heart failure, to roles for inflammatory cells interacting with the blood vessel wall, to ways in which iron and ATP are utilized by blood vessels in the circulation and kidney. I also just finished a book on the dinosaur cardiovascular system.
What are the most intriguing potential clinical applications of your work?
Several in cardiovascular disease. Although many have direct applications to the regulation of blood pressure and understanding diseases like hypertension, some of our new work is directly related to cardiometabolic disease, ranging from obesity to heart failure.
What made you choose UVA Health as the place to do your research?
Cardiovascular research is really a core strength at UVA Health. UVA Health has an extremely large, internationally recognized group of over 150 different researchers doing cardiovascular work at any one time as members of the Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center. In addition, UVA Health, in general, is a highly collaborative environment where collaborations at every level are valued.
What do you wish more people knew about your area of research?
From a public perspective: Cardiovascular disease is the largest cause of death in the United States and the world, however, it rarely gets the publicity that other diseases do.
From a scientific perspective: Many diseases at their origin are starting to overlap, with cardiovascular disease, cancer, and many autoimmune diseases showing similar manifestations.
How did you become interested in your area of research?
I had a long-time interest in dinosaurs that pushed me into science. My PhD work was focused in the epithelium of the lung attempting to figure out how the two main cell types in the distal lung were able to “communicate” to coordinate function. While doing my PhD, I saw a talk at a conference by Brian Duling, the late former director of the UVA Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center about endothelium and smooth muscle communication. I was completely taken by that talk and switched fields from lungs to vasculature to go work with Duling for my post-doc. From there, I stayed at UVA for my faculty position.
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