Gillian Gray
Reader
Address
- Street
-
The Queen's Medical Research Institute
BioQuarter
47 Little France Crescent - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH16 4TJ
Research summary
Survival following acute myocardial infarction (MI), or heart attack, has increased thanks to efficient intervention to restore blood supply to the myocardium, or heart muscle. However, the myocardium still incurs damage, and as the adult heart does cannot efficiently regenerate new tissue, a fibrous scar is formed that does not contribute to contraction. In the longer term the remaining healthy heart undergoes remodelling while trying to maintain cardiac output, leading to an increased chance of developing of debilitating chronic heart failure. My research is focused primarily on understanding how to limit the loss of contractile tissue that occurs immediately after MI, but in particular the processes involved in infarct healing (inflammation, fibroblast activation & angiogenesis) and how these might be targeted therapeutically to prevent infarct expansion during repair. We also work on development of new imaging techniques to identify vulnerable peri-infarct myocardium and on the mechanisms that support neonatal heart regeneration after injury. see Research in Nutshell video: http://www.nutshell-videos.ed.ac.uk/gillian-gray-myocardial-injury-repai...