Medical Genetics:
Our research also has medical genetic components to it. The medical use of the warfarin-based blood thinning drug coumadin to combat thrombosis, stroke, and heart attack is a true success story in applied biochemical research. However, the use of warfarin is complicated by the difficulty to predict the dose needed to protect patients from clinical events due to under-dosing, while avoiding harmful side effects of the drug due to overdosing. We employ microarray technology to identify genes that interact with warfarin, and to identify genes that differ in the expression between warfarin resistant and warfarin susceptible rats.
Our research aims to help identifying the gene(s) underlying pathways affected by warfarin, and the role genes play in the expression of complex disease. For example, we now have found that rats that are resistant to warfarin show rather well developed signs of cardiovascular calcification. The warfarin-resistant rat could therefore serve as a model system for the study of this phenomenon that more commonly is referred to as one of the many possible forms of arteriosclerosis.
To investigate the health consequences suffered by warfarin resistant rats, such as cardiovascular health and bone mineral composition, we employ histological and imaging technologies.
Representative publication:
- Michael H Kohn, Roger Price, Hans-Joachim Pelz. (2008) A cardiovascular phenotype in warfarin-resistant Vkorc1 mutant rats. Artery Research 2:138-147.
