Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2024

A study describes the role of the ACTN2 enhancer in myocardial maturation, highlighting its relevance in regulating structural, functional and metabolic dynamics in the heart. These findings offer insights that may advance our understanding of cardiovascular disease.

Rare and common variants in HTRA1 are associated with ischemic stroke. Research now sheds light on the underlying genetic architecture and suggests a vasculopathy with a broader phenotypic spectrum. Lower HTRA1 protease activity and circulating levels both predict an increased risk of ischemic stroke and coronary artery disease.

Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells have small pores called fenestrae that allow bidirectional exchange of substrates such as lipids between hepatocytes and blood. New work reveals molecular pathways linking hyperlipidemia to these cells’ loss of fenestrae as a starting point for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease.

We discover a function of innate immune cells that is important for healing injury: macrophages adopt mural cell roles that are important for restoring blood vessel function and perfusion.

Fernandez-Patron et al. propose a unifying framework explaining how diverse risk factors such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes lead pathogenesis and progression of heart failure.

Fleetwood et al. review the role of immune cell dysfunction and inflammation in cardiovascular diseases. Their Review explores immune cell metabolic reprogramming in response to environmental cues, offering insights into potential therapeutic strategies for cardiovascular diseases.

Carpenter and Maryanovich explore how hematopoietic homeostasis, governed by local niche and systemic mechanisms, is impacted by environmental and immune stressors like stress, sleep patterns, aging and inflammation and examine the implications for cardiovascular diseases.

Htet et al. identify and characterize a transcriptional enhancer that regulates cardiomyocyte maturation and function in human pluripotent stem cell and mouse models.

Amoedo-Leite et al. report that, in ischemic tissue, a subset of macrophages adopts mural cell-like morphology, gene expression and function, which is crucial for injury healing.

Malik, Beaufort et al. show that rare and common genetic variations in HTRA1 associate with stroke and coronary artery disease outcomes via independent mechanisms.

Lambert, Oc et al. reconstruct gene regulatory networks from single-cell transcriptomics and epigenetic profiling, compare mouse and human data, and report previously unrecognized regulators of vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation in disease.

Eberhard et al. show that SEMA3A regulates liver sinusoidal endothelial cell fenestrations by signaling through NRP1 and LIMK1, revealing a pathway that connects hyperlipidemia to the development of steatotic liver disease.

Bergstedt et al. show that the effects of genetic liability to major depressive disorder can cause an increase in cardiovascular risk and that metabolic, psychological and lifestyle factors are partly responsible for this association.