Heart disease remains the number one cause of death in Finland and worldwide. Traditional risk factors, such as blood pressure, blood cholesterol and diabetes. are already effectively used in treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD). However, these risk factors can explain about a half of the risk for the coronary artery disease cases, and even less of the risk in fatal cases. Smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells, cell types located in the blood vessel walls, are important for the genetic risk of CAD. Based on large genetic studies, hundreds of genetics regions that are associated with heart disease, but we need to understand how these regions mediate the disease processes. I will investigate the the causal mechanisms and genes that mediate the disease using state-of the art methods: genome-wide CRISPR screens, AI-powered prioritization methods, in vivo-studies and vascular wall on chip modeling. This study may open new avenues to develop treatments to target blood vessels.

2024

2028