How does blood flow shape the cardiovascular system?
The heart beats 2.5 billion times during an average lifetime, and cardiac contractions are essential from early embryonic development to the end of life. Given the importance of the cardiovascular system to sustain life, cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of mortality worldwide and represent a major public health challenge.
The blood flow, generated by the cardiac contractions, is essential to transport oxygen and nutrients throughout the body. Besides this role, the mechanical constraints generated by the blood flow, called hemodynamic forces, are also involved in shaping organs during development and can be associated with severe pathological conditions such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, and thrombosis.
However, little is known about the mechanical response of cardiovascular cell populations to different blood flow constraints. To study these questions, we use the zebrafish as a model organism, which develops a cardiovascular system highly similar to humans. Overall, I expect our research to improve the understanding of blood flow mechanosensation in the cardiovascular system, and advance treatments of blood flow-related diseases.
Thomas Juan is an assistant professor at Uppsala University, in the Department of Immunology, Genetics, and Pathology. He obtained his PhD from the University Côte d’Azur, working at the Institute of Biology Valrose, Nice, France. He then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Germany for his postdoc, in the team of Didier Stainier. Since 2024, he is an independent group leader and a Beijer researcher at the Beijer Laboratory for Gene and Neuroscience.