Email: Cameron.McCarthy@uscmed.sc.edu / Twitter: @CamGMcCarthy

McCarthy et al. Reconstitution of autophagy ameliorates vascular function and arterial stiffening in spontaneously hypertensive rats. Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol 317: H1013—H1027, 2019

URL: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpheart.00227.2019

1) Summarize your work in one sentence.

This work supports the concept that diminished autophagy contributes to vascular deterioration in hypertension and that therapeutic reconstitution of autophagic activity can ameliorate this phenotype.

2) Summarize your findings in one sentence.

Overall our data indicated that reconstitution of arterial autophagy in SHR improved endothelial and vascular smooth muscle function, which synergized to also reverse vascular remodelling and stiffening.

3) Which were the more important methods you used in this work? If it is not a traditional method, you can briefly explain the concept of that methodology.

We predominantly used wire and pressure myography approaches to analyse vascular function and structure, respectively. These techniques were complimented with expression analysis using western blot and histology.

4) What did you learn from this paper, what was your take-home message?

Physiologically, this study revealed that the essential cellular process of autophagy could be a target to reverse vascular deterioration associated with hypertension. Future work will focus on revealing the specific underlying mechanisms by which autophagy improves vascular structure and function. This is the initial theme of my soon-be-launched independent research lab. If any trainee (post-doc or student) is interested in this project and/or wanting to learn vascular biology approaches, please don’t hesitate to message me!