Medicine News Archive Featured in the Media JeffNEWS

Hypertension researcher Andrea Eckhart, Ph.D., of Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia has received a two-year, $200,000 grant from the prestigious W.W. Smith Charitable Trust to study the molecular roots of high blood pressure, a condition which affects one in four Americans.

High blood pressure, or hypertension, is rampant among adults in the United States, and can lead to heart disease, kidney disease and stroke. Medications are considered woefully inadequate. Less than 35 percent of individuals have their high blood pressure controlled well enough with drugs.

Dr. Eckhart, associate professor of medicine, and director of the Eugene Feiner Laboratory for Vascular Biology and Thrombosis in the Center for Translational Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Jefferson Medical College, says that a better understanding of the molecular signaling pathways underlying high blood pressure will help lead to improved therapies. She and her team plan to study the role of a type of protein receptor, Gq, in constricting blood vessels and in the development and progression of hypertension.

Dr. Eckhart believes that learning how to block the signals to critical receptors will enable patients to have to take only one type of medication or other therapy. Current drugs and treatments target receptors, rather than signals, impeding each individually, often requiring patients to take multiple medications.

“If our predictions are correct, after we study the Gq signaling,” says Dr. Eckhart, “we may be able to create new antihypertensive therapies that knock out all of these receptors at once, instead of hitting each receptor one at a time, the way we do now. This could transform the treatment of hypertension, making it a condition that is much easier for patients to manage on a day-to-day basis.”

The W.W. Smith Charitable Trust funds basic medical research in the areas of heart, cancer, AIDS and juvenile diabetes. It identifies and finances projects that are unique and tries to select promising researchers that have the potential to attract the National Institutes of Health, or other large funding organizations after the Trust’s support. Grants have generally been given to promote basic medical research, and for faculty with appointments in universities, hospitals and research centers in the Delaware Valley.