DrHeather Medbury

Our research focus is cardiovascular disease. It is not just a global problem, but likely a personal one, as it doesn't just happen in someone else's family, but often within your own. Despite current treatments, patients with cardiovascular disease have a considerable residual risk of experiencing a clinical event (such as a heart attack or stroke). A challenge now is to develop strategies to prevent these remaining cardiovascular events.

Though inflammation is thought to be a key contributor to residual risk, it is not a current treatment target. For the benefit of anti-inflammatory treatments to outweigh the risks, specific approaches will be required. A potential treatment target is the monocyte, as monocyte derived cells play a key role atherosclerotic plaque development and progression.

Thus the focus of our group is to redefine the role of monocytes and macrophages in atherosclerosis in order to identify targets for therapeutic manipulation that could stabilize the disease. This will potentially result in a reduction in events such as heart attack and stroke that will not only decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with the disease, but also limit the associated, health, social and economic burdens it poses.