Question: What project are you working on now

Anita Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2014:

Dear adbiknowdaalphabet, jonzothebeast and hattiewiggins,

Every day I can answer this question in a different way. That’s one of the exciting things about Scientific Research.

Today, I’m making a poster summary of one of my projects to take to a conference the week after next. In this project we have been trying to establish how macrophages in atherosclerotic plaques are activated.

Let me explain. Atherosclerotic plaques cause blockages in arteries which can lead to heart attack and stroke (and other things). Macrophages are a type of immune cell that are often thought to be the ‘bad boys’ of the atherosclerotic plaque. They eat up as much of the bad lipid in your artery wall as they can, but this changes them – activates them – so that they become damaging to the artery wall. For example, they produce a form of enzyme called a protease, which degrades the proteins in the artery wall that make it elastic. (When you feel your pulse, you are feeling the artery wall elastically expanding and contracting. Proteases can digest the elastic component that allows the expansion and contraction.) People had thought that there was another type of immune cell called a T-lymphocyte that controlled macrophage activation. We have discovered that T-lymphocytes are NOT necessary for macrophages to become activated.

It’s a small step, but it’s necessary that we know this in order to achieve our goal – to make the atherosclerotic plaque remove itself from the patient.